Pyrrhic WarDance
by SithKnight-Galen
Summary: Reviews freely accepted. A series of Stories following the 19th and 17th ATACs during the final Sentinels campaigns and the Invid Invasion.
1. Story Summary and Character bios

Story Synopsis

This story begins during the final days of the Sentinels proper campaign, between the liberation of Haydon IV and the final battles of the War over the Invid Homeworld, the planet Optera.  It then covers the first invasion wave during the attemptive assaults on Invid occupied Earth.  The groups that were chosen to be portrayed were two units that were mentioned on more than one occasion were the REF 19th  ATAC Veritech Fighter Squadron, the Diamondbacks and the REF 17th ATAC Mechanized Infantry Battalion (Heavy), the IronWalkers.

The first story arc covers one of the initial drops onto Optera-space, and the fun that occurs to the REF recon team that gets the fun job of carrying out the assignment.  It is a force reconnaissance that sounds easy on paper, but actually getting the mission accomplished on the ground and surviving to get that information back to the fleet, that becomes a different ballgame real quick.

Dramatis Personnae

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Just so you know who you are reading about in the stories hereafter:

Robotech Expeditionary Force Navy= Constitute the flyers and members of the fleet. This would include the Veritech pilots, munitions handlers and flight crews, pilots and crews of the shuttles and capital ships, and command crews.

Robotech Expeditionary Force Army =The primary ground forces of the REF. These individuals include those who pilot destroids, special forces commandoes, ground based infantry (mechanized and un-mechanized), conventional armor elements, and their support forces. 

REF Forces Roster:

Major General Elliott J. Caruthers (REFA) = A member of Hunter's senior staff, and the Commander in Chief of this task force.  Splits his time between the combat fleet and the REF Provisional Council.  A command officer who actually cares about his people and prefers to minimize the casualties that his people take during his combat actions, despite the near impossible odds that he is given for most of his assignments. His piercing steel blue eyes have been known to make more than one cocky pilot stop in his tracks. Is a true and blue combat officer and has a combat record to prove it. Was a Destroid Civil Defense Unit Commander aboard the SDF-1.

Captain Brandon Derringer (REFN)  "Baelanos"  = Veteran of the Malcontent Uprisings and of most of the major Sentinels campaigns under the REF. While not jaded, has had most of his idealism burned of while watching many good people over the past decade sacrifice their lives for what they felt was right. The bright spot in his life is his wife of five years and his close-knit fighting group that is like the family he lost during the rain of death. A very talented ace, he is adept at mecha combat on all levels.

Lieutenant Commander Craig Martin (REFN) "Otaku" = Another veteran of the Congo and Brasilia campaigns, Martin has been Derringer's wingman for almost 7 years.  A confirmed bachelor, he enjoys throwing in his own brand of chaos into the mix of the couples around him.  He has a more devil-may-care personality when on the ground, but in the air, he is literally hell on wheels.  Trained in and preferring the bigger boats, Craig is usually relegated to BETA duty, although he would much prefer being behind the controls of one of the "Zentraedi Busters".

Lieutenant  junior grade Steven Niequiest (REFN) "Merlin" = A talented VF pilot and squadron's practical joker. Has actually been disciplined and demoted twice for "conduct unbecoming an officer".  However, he is loyal to the REF's ideals and his mischievous personality and sardonic behaviors are actually his unique way of handling and separating himself from the horrors of the war thus far.  He is married to Lindsey Niequiest.

Lieutenant Lindsey Niequiest (REFN) "Firebrand" = The other of the Niequiest VT steam engine, Lindsey is also the more practical minded of the duo. She is a spit and polish officer, and a second generation VT pilot. Her father being one of the veterans of the original Skull Squadron under Commander Roy Fokker. She enlisted into the Academy and had just graduated in time for the Hunter's wedding.  Originally assigned to the Ghost Squadron under General T.R. Edwards, she requested and was granted a transfer into the Diamondbacks. Once in the Diamondbacks, she was able to prove herself to the fullest of her abilities and grow as a VT pilot and an REF officer.

Lieutenant junior grade Angelina Spencer (REFN) "Primrose" =  An very spirited and talented Alpha VT pilot. Comes from a scientific background, with her parents still attached to the re-building efforts on the Robotech Masters Homeworld.  The youngest of  three kids, Angelina feels the need to prove herself the equal to anyone else in the fleet, and most importantly, to her family.  She sometimes takes risks without thinking them through, and then tries to cover up her actions by pushing herself harder, not acknowledging her mistakes in the first place.  She is a good leader, and once her "ice queen" shell is broken through, is actually a very intelligent and compassionate woman to be with and around. Spencer has some great leadership qualities, however, like a diamond in the rough, she still needs time to hone down those rough edges.  She oddly feels in direct competition with squadronmates Steven and Lindsey Niequiest.

Ensign Johnathon Whetstone (REFN) "Sci-fi" = Another of the new generation of fighter jocks who espouse themselves as the "Kings of the Sky."  However, quite a few of his comrades actually think that jet fuel might just run in his veins after all.  He is very talented, but also a bit reckless.  He graduated near the top of his class and was initially selected for the Wolfpack until he found out that he might be a ground pounder, even if it were piloting a SPARTAS class hover tank. He is a qualified pilot in most Veritech styles, but the bigger, heavy hitters are his choice.  Preferring the strafing style of combat and close ground support, the Beta instantly stood out in Johnny's mind.  He is also almost as good in the bird as he claims to be, and if he can survive long enough, might be able to hone his raw talent into something that can match Jack Baker or Max Sterling.  He gets his nickname from his odd habits of watching an old series of shows from a earth TV show from the Pre-Zentraedi holocaust called the "Sci-Fi channel", especially one show called Star Trek, which he spends a lot of his free time watching.

Commander Janine Derringer (REFN) "Trinity" = REF capital ship helmsman and captain of the Horizont class troop drop ship designated "Lightningbolt Lead". A career officer, she puts her job first as one of the top priorities in her life. She met and married Brandon right after the Tirol campaign and considers him one of her best friends. She was originally a flight control officer attached to the SDF-3's Combat Information Center. She had received pilot's training before the launch from the Robotech Factory, but didn't feel the urge to transfer to a line duty posting until they had been in Tirol space for about a year. Feeling cabin fever while stuck in orbit, Janine took to doing shuttle runs between the command centers in place in orbit and the planet and moons to relieve the monotony.  Eventually she was transferred full time to the Horizont division and then given her own transport squadron to command.

Lieutenant junior grade Cynthia Mallard (REFN) = REF Mechanical engineer assigned as the flight engineer for "Lightningbolt Lead".  Has been with Cartwright and Derringer ever since the boat had been commissioned and considers it her crowning achievement that she has kept the ship in the air and the top performance the entire time she has been assigned to the bird.  Is a complete mechanical  tech-head that  really enjoys her work, despite the fact that she has been hit on by more than her share of guys and gals.  She is also one of the space babies born on the Robotech Factory and thus feels more at home around the machines that she has been assigned to work on and with than the people that she has to work with.

Ensign Brody Atkins (REFN)  =  VT pilot currently assigned as the co-pilot to "Lightningbolt Lead."  The "Greenie", as it were, of the flight crew, Brody was assigned to the Horizont detachment after losing his third aircraft in combat in six sorties. While a good pilot, he has a tendency to overextend himself.  He is trained to pilot almost anything that has wings in the REF arsenal.  He enjoys working with the crew and feels he is learning a lot from them, but he still wants to get back behind the controls of another VT, as soon as command allows him.

Chief Petty Officer Rico Cartwright (REFN)  = Loadmaster and Crew chief for "Lightningbolt Lead". Served his entire career as either a loadmaster or on a flight line of some sort.  He is a perfectionist that enjoys making sure that everything on his bird is in perfect order and by the book.  Has been part of Derringer's crew since the outset and is considered the "old man of the crew".  Also considered something of a good luck charm, having been on a ship that has been shot up but still made it home on at least dozen different occasions throughout the Macross conflict, the Malcontent Uprisings and the outer space border skirmishes, and the Sentinels campaigns. He attributes at least part of his uncanny luck to the fact that the people he works with actually use the stuff that he prepares for him the way it is supposed to be used.  He is found constantly tinkering on the shuttles and arguing with Lieutenant Mallard, who he treats like a kid sister for the most part.

Major Ryan Darmouth (REFA) "Nighthunter" =  Company Commander for the Mechanized Infantry Unit (2nd Company) attached to the 17th ATAC, the IronWalkers, one of the original Destroid units that were holdovers from the First Robotech War. Darmouth began his career as a Destroid jockey,  as first a gunner on one of the old Monsters, then eventually getting his own mecha in the form of an RDF Excalibur as part of the Civil Defense units for New Macross during the Re-Construction.  He then transferred to the Robotech factory as part of the first batch of Military Specialists to be trained in the then experimental Cyclone MOSPEADA system.  Darmouth actually had a hand in creating the CADS system when he began to talk about clandestine operations and having a weapon system that would have been akin to the "pry bars" that the old style Gladiators were known and feared for.  When the Tirol mission came up, Darmouth joined in without a moment's hesitation, even after his wife served him divorce papers for him signing up.  He then took part in the initial recon of the Tirol Campaign.  When volunteers were being taken to join with Admiral Hunters and the Sentinels, Ryan was talked into staying to keep an eye on things along with Major John Carpenter by Colonel Wolfe and Commander Vincent Grant, their two old unit commanders and good friends.  Darmouth then served under Reinhardt in a variety of capacities, even serving as part of his bodyguard during Edward's abortive coup of the REF and resulting retreat and defection to the Regent's side of the conflict.  Ryan has an extensive background in getting down and dirty when the job needs to be done, and cannot stand people who do not see things his way, the REF way. Pilots a VR-041 and has been flight qualified for the VAF-6R recon alpha.

First Sergeant Antonio Knupf (REFA) =  NCOIC of the 17th ATAC squadron. Another lifetime RDF/REF member. Knupf has been in the military in one form or capacity for close to twenty years, and it shows in his words and actions.  While not afraid of technology, the "Topkick" is still set in his ways, and takes a bit of time to warm up to new, especially unproven ideas.  It took him a bit of time to adjust to going from being a baseline grunt to piloting something like a Cyclone, but once he got the hang of it, he will swear his life, and the lives of his soldiers by it.  He treats the soldiers under his command as he would his children, and in a way, the soldiers in his combat team have become the family that he lost in the Congo when Malcontents detonated a Nuclear device over the area.  He was only saved because he was in Monument City with his youngest son.  

First Lieutenant Abraham Zhao MD (REFA)  = REF Field doctor attached to the 17th ATAC.  He feels that being in the field helping keep the injured alive long enough to get transported shipside is the most important part of him being down on the field.  While does honor and respect the Hippocratic Oath, he also sees that he is in a war, and if he had to disable and enemy instrument of war, so be it, as long as the pilot inside is not killed or harmed more than necessary.  He really does not like the callous way that the Robotech Masters treat their people and the Zentraedi, and oddly enough, Dr. Zhao can actually empathize with the Invid plight as he finds out more about their tragic history and what has caused them to evolve into the onslaught that they are now.  Abe is a good friend with almost anyone, but is also widely, albeit quietly known, that he pilots a VR-041 Saber Cyclone for a reason, and it is not for the protection and versatility it provides him.  He is considered on of the top swordsmen in the fleet, and can be a match for almost anyone with his Jujitsu and Aikido-Ryu skills. 

Second Lieutenant Leon Graffson PhD (REFA) = REF Robotechnologist and Invid Xeno-sociologist attached to General Emil Lang and seconded to Captain Darmouth's combat team. He is uncomfortable with the combat aspects of being attached to an Alpha Tactical Armored Corp unit, but he does admit that it allows him to do what he loves best, which is observe, record, and analyze alien mecha and technology in the field and under their own environment. He usually rides shotgun in Tribanuiski's Destroid or accompanies the Cyclone teams when he has to travel in the field. He is cleared to pilot the REF Gladiator and the VR-052 Cyclone.

First Lieutenant  Marquis Tribanuiski (REFA) "Gunslinger" = Actually a mecha pilot originally from the EBSIS. Joined the REF at the insistence of childhood friend Darmouth. Is a Destroid platoon commander and is seconded to Darmouth's Mechanized Infantry company as a heavy mobile fire support unit. Pilots an REF Excalibur, although trained in just about every style of Destroid and battloid. Prefers the duelist style of combat, selecting out and destroying opponents in a more leveled environment, usually at range.

Corporal David Scott Shael (REFA) =  Another Cyclone trained mechanized infantryman in the 17th ATAC.  Likes to be gung-ho about everything he does.  Feels like he has to prove himself to his comrades, since his last unit was all but wiped out and he got rotated into the IronWalkers.  Is very good at what he has been trained to do.  Has the odd ability to make most machines dance to whatever tune he wants them to.  He actually wanted to be attached to Command as an EWAC technician, but his own superior skills at handling the Cyclone systems and abilities in close-in trench warfare landed him in the infantry, much to chagrin.  However, never one to be down for long, David has made the best of the situation and is hoping for a second chance to get back to his first love, Computers and their related technologies.  Oddly enough, he has become friends with Major Darmouth, and the Major, knowing of Shael's abilities and his desires, is trying to help him get a slot in an  Officer Candidate School rotation. Shael pilots a VR-052 with the standard weapons load-out, but his carries a custom-built enhanced sensor suite and computer slave drive.

Staff Sergeant Isaiah Fitzgerald (REFA) = The 17th ATAC's resident grease monkey for the Cyclone detachment. Pilots a VR-052 but usually prefers putting things together to taking them apart. However, when the time to make things go boom, he can get the job done on that count as well.  He usually works hand in hand with Dr. Graffson when carrying out many of their more outlandish projects. Sometimes they also enlist the aid of  Sergeant McClellan when it comes to the Mecha or weapons systems.  He is currently waiting to be re-assigned full term with Major Richard Burke's weapon and design team back on the SDF-3.  He pilots a VR-052.

  
Sergeant First Class Maxwell Baxter (REFA) "Bishop" = REF Gladiator  Destroid pilot and Tribanuiski's  NCOIC.  Is the father figure to quite a few of the other destroid pilots, and usually takes it upon himself to whip them into shape.  And slight oddity to the ranks, Baxter was originally a Chaplain's assistant (Roman Catholic) when he first enlisted into the REF.  He then transferred to the mecha units after witnessing first hand the aftermath of some of the conflicts that the REF was trying to prevent.  He still maintains his priestly calling, and leads the Destroid teams in prayers and trying to save the "wayward sheep" as it were. Due to religious differences, he comes into some conflicts with Darmouth., but feels the man has his heart in the right place.  He also makes it his point to get the "newbies" in line when they are assigned to his unit.  Oddly, walks with a distinct limp after having both knees shattered during the Tirolian Liberation.

Sergeant  Melvin Skyefusche McClellan (REFA) "Nukem" = REF Excalibur Destroid pilot from the devastated United Kingdom region of Europe.  An RDF reservist at the end of the Malcontents Uprisings on Earth, he accepted his tours to work in space during the rebuilding of the moon and mars deep space colonies.  When the first calls for volunteers for the mission to Tirol came out, Mel was among the first of those volunteers. Unlike most, Mel sees himself as the descendant of his famous clan heritage, and he is among the stars to progress that heritage to the current generation and add glory and fame to that said family lineage.  He sees the battles with the Invid, Loyalists Zentraedi, Robotech Masters' forces to be nothing more than the challenge that he justly deserves to test his mighty abilities.  His combat style is more the "do-or-die" type, with him charging at the enemy, or singling out a single specific target and pounding at it until it does not get up again before moving on to the next one.  He does his own repairs to his custom Excalibur, and has gotten a second PBC cannon appendage attached to the normal arm.  His mecha tends to ride a bit hotter, and he has to spend more time keeping it in prime shape, but it is designed to put out more of what he wants it to do. 

Corporal  Eric Joseph (REFA) =   VR-052 Cyclone mechanized infantry pilot. A quiet man who has a love for machines and freedom.  Is a Linguistics specialist and helps translate for the party when they encounter various indigenous people.  He joined the REF to get an education, escape the squalor of the part of America where he was raised following the "Rain of Death", and basically to see the universe on what he thought were his own terms. Has shown an aptitude for explosive ordnances, and has been taken under Sergeant Fitzgerald's wing as of late.

Staff Sergeant Hector Diaz (REFA) "Deadpool" = Military Specialist from the Brasilia sector and a child of the Reconstruction Era and the Malcontent Uprisings.  Seeing how the malcontents destroyed so much of what the RDF and U.N. Spacy, he vowed to ensure that that would never happen again. He then enlisted in the REF, and during basic training and it then discovered that he had an aptitude for something he didn't think was possible, Sniping.  He abhors close-combat fighting, thinking it is barbaric, and can barely pass his hand-to-hand competency drills, but at range with a weapon ranging from a pellet gun up to a shoulder mounted rocket system, he seems to be able to hit his targets with unerring accuracy. Pilots a VR-052 with the EP-40 variant.

 Second Lieutenant Sylvia Voorhees (REFA) "Silver Fox" = REF Defender Destroid pilot. A cool and calculating woman who usually is paired up with the more emotionally charged McClellan. She joined the REF at the insistence of her older brother, originally as a shipboard communications engineer.  After his death during the Tirolian liberation, she requested a transfer into the Destroid Corps and has been there ever since.  Despite her positioning and preference with an anti-aircraft mecha, she often uses it as a heavy support platform for the cyclone units that she usually is "mother-henning" to.


	2. Chapter 01: Drop Zone

Robotech:  Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter One: Drop Zone

By SithKnight-Galen

A/N:  This series takes place during the beginning stages of the invasion of Optera up thru the invasion by the first wave of REF ships to earth. I decided to extrapolate upon two combat teams that were mentioned in numerous Jack McKinney Sentinels books and a few times in the Macross Saga, the Diamondbacks, and the IronWalkers.  While the traditional crew of heroes( Lisa, Rick, Max, Scott, Jack, John Wolfe, etc.) are not featured in this, they are mentioned or do get to make cameos during this series.  All feedback is welcome, and if you flame, just remember, I have plenty of marshmallows and a really long lightsaber.

A/N2: This is my first full length story on fanfiction.net…Thank Sphersian and Carla Fox for this horror. ;-P  Now, on with the show!!

**Graja System**

The fighting was becoming it's most intense as the Invid were pushed inside their second perimeter by the invading REF forces.  The armored scouts and airborne inorganics were being swatted out the sky by the score before the vengeful humans.  However, the Robotech Expeditionary Forces were paying a heavy price indeed for the liberating of this system.  While the  Alpha and Beta pilots were steam rolling over the Invid assault ships in one on one dog fighting, the bigger shuttles and transports that they were supposed to be escorting in were taking a mighty pounding from both the assault carriers that had launched the mecha as well as the planet-based defenses that were doing their utmost to swat the humans out of the air. 

Captain Brandon "Baelanos" Derringer, Diamondback Squadron Leader,  watched as another Horizont class troop transport burst into flames and careened from the Graja III's upper atmosphere, breaking up into so many meteorite fragments.  The names of at least a dozen people that he personally knew scrolled thru his mind in a heartbeat as he watch them die in a fraction of a second.  He then watched the LEGIOS that had been assigned to that ship going into an almost berserk whirlwind of death a the squadron of Invid responsible for it's parent ship's destruction.  Baelanos had to pull his attention away from the gladiatorial combat as a series of plasma bolts nearly punched his ticket.  He pulled back his nose as he rolled to the side, the bolts passing bare millimeters below him, close enough to score his blue Alpha's paint.  Just as the armored scout attempted to line him up for another shot, his wingman blew him from the sky.

"Nice shot Otaku!"

"Just doing my job, now let's get back to making sure our cargo makes it to the surf….after this that is!"  Lieutenant Commander Craig Martin pulled his Beta down and hard after trio of suicidal scouts who were trying for a strafing run on their own pair of Horizonts.  The belly-mounted tri-barreled GU-XX made short work of the trio, swatting the flankers out of the air before the flight leader was even made aware that death was upon them   The leader tried to make a roll away, similar to the one that Baelanos himself had tried a few moments before, but that was cut short in mid-move by Captain Derringer himself.

"Can't have a copycat."

"Please, you know imitation is the greatest form of flattery, Captain."

"Hush Lindsey, we don't need the good Captain flustered when he is supposed to be leading us to yet new heights of glory babysitting these big birds down to the surface."

"Stay focused on target, you two. We aren't home free, yet, and just remember Merlin, we don't make it down, your ability to make it back to the fleet are all but nil."

"Thanks for putting him back in line there…."Mrs. Baelanos"

There are series of snickers and chuckles on the comment briefly as Commander Janine Derringer tried to get control of the fighter element that had been assigned to her formation of ships and once more,  the Diamondback's jester had decided to make a tense situation into a something worse, a joke.  Even his own wife, who was also his wingman, seemed to have trouble keeping him in line at times during battles.  However, they were one of the better Alpha-Beta teams in the REF, probably only surpassed by the Sterlings and Penn and Baker and that weird duo of Hawthorne and Whittcomb over in the Gunslingers.  A bout of turbulence as her ungainly ship hit the middle atmosphere brought her attention back to the task at hand, which was getting her ship and her payload of a dozen destroids down to the surface. This was actually their second round trip down to the planet's surface, and her group was fortunate not have lost any of their six heavy trans-atmospheric transports.  Their only in-transit casualties up until this point was Heins and Washington's teams both getting pounded during the climb out of  Graja's gravity well the first go-round. Spencer, Washington's alpha pilot appeared to have been able to bail out in time, but they weren't able to confirm that any of the Cyclone or Spec-Ops teams were able to pick her up.

"LZ beacons hot and online, chief."

"Acknowledged and laying in CONN."

"Good. Set in and begin our run. Let the cargo know we are t-90 from drop zone, loadmaster."

"Aye ma'am, err sir."

Nodding curtly to her crew, Janine called back out to her husband on his TAC-Freq. So far this mission was rough, but they had come out of it relatively intact.  With a bit of faith, their luck would continue to hold out.

"Diamondback 01, close formation as we are hot dropping on the LZ. Captain Derringer, make sure that our path is clear.  We are beginning our run now. Lightningbolt Three you are pace setter."

The indicated Horizont sped ahead a bit and began to go nose down as the cloud cover dissipated showing the terran-like terrain below. The ground defenses tried to get a look on the incoming formation of invaders but they were almost too difficult to track, and as the Invid defenses opened up, the REF responded in kind with Defender's, Sharks and Mini-monsters which had gotten themselves dug into overwatch positions during the first wave.

The first three ships were able to swoop in and drop off their armored bunkers in such a way that the groundpounders could use the cargo containers as a beachhead and initial command post.  As the fourth ship, Lightningbolt Six went thru it's procedure of  swooping down, detaching it's pair of armored bunkers in it's pattern, and then climbing at full burn back for open space, it suddenly began to smoke from a dozen locations in it underbelly. A squadron of Shock Troopers broke thru the underbrush laying down a withering barrage of fire upon the hapless ship even as it began to try and climb from the landing zone.  The escort fighters came around and pounced upon the Invid like angry hornets, but it was too late to save the beleaguered ship as it made planetfall, slamming into the wood line and digging a deep groove into the ground that marked it's crash path.  

The Invid, as soon as it became apparent that their initial target had been successfully neutralized, began to scatter and try to pick off the other bipedal and flying nuisances. Unfortunately for them, the humans were quick at adapting to the situation, and the Gladiator and Excalibur units that were being carried in the precious cargo containers were already pouring out and adding in their own brand of destruction, making the Invid pay for the deaths of the flight crew in spades.  A quad of more aggressive Troopers made a kamikaze charge at one Excalibur, but were quickly and effectively dropped by Merlin as the air cover decided to come back into the fight themselves, hammering the ground based defenders without mercy.  The alpha-beta mixed bags strafed the wood line and any clusters of targets,  forcing the Invid to scatter and thus get overwhelmed with numbers of swarming Cyclone teams and destroids.  Some of the smarter, or perhaps sneakier Invid decided to make it over to the downed Horizont to finish off any of the survivors before the other humans could mount an effective rescue party.  They began slashing and prying away the armored skin of the ship to get to the un-protected crew inside.

Just as the first Trooper peeled away the final piece of hull plating however, instead of spying corpses or cowering fleshthings, it caught an eyeful of Gallant H-90 just before the pilot got splattered thru the back of his cockpit and his body fluids mixed with that of his nutrient bath.  Even as the first shock trooper fell back, half a dozen green and purple Cyclones came pouring up and out from the hole, shooting missiles and reflex- powered energy blasts in all directions. In seconds, it was over, as the last Invid fell to the ground, holed in over a dozen places and with both claws and one plasma cannon blown completely off of it's main body.

During this bout of madness and death, the last two Horizonts, including Janine's made their drops and were re-grouping and pulling back at full burn for the relative safety of their deployment zone back in space.  After a few more passes, the escorts of the 19th ATAC rejoined the ships they were "mother-henning".  As the Horizonts broke orbit and made their way back to the Quintet of Ikazuchi class SDF carriers, the fighter screen had to break thru a few more of the defending Invid air defenses, swatting them aside with missile barrages and high-velocity slugs. Brandon oversaw the transports getting reloaded with yet more droppable bunkers and his own people reloading their ordnances, he let his fatigue overtake him for a brief few moments.  After all, even after almost four  years of this, it was not getting any easier.  He snapped back to attention as the shuttles re-formed on him and his fighter group, re-enforced by yet another flight from the carriers began their way back to the planet to drop down more soldiers and dish out more death.

'_Yup_,' he thought. '_Today is most definitely going to be a long day indeed…_'

With that grim thought, Captain Derringer led his boys and girls back into the fray once more, headlong back into the chaos on the planet below.

SithKnight Galen-à  Don't forget to write and tell me what you think!  Reviews are good for you! ;-P


	3. Chapter 02: A New Mission

Robotech:  Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Two: A New Mission

By SithKnight-Galen

A/N: This is a disclaimer to state that the term Robotech, Macross, Mospeada and all references to Robotech and it's established characters are registered trademarks to the American Military complex and multiple Japanese business interests.  I have no desire to cross either of these entities so I take no credit for their work.  However, the characters depicted in this story are the creation of my insanity, and therefore entirely mine, even if some of them bear some likenesses to people I know and love (sometimes).  Use them only with my express permission.

I love comments and complaints.  I thrive on knowing how people tick.  Besides, I need to get in some more lightsaber practice and I need volunteers.  Now on with the Story::

*******

Brandon left the flight deck to go to the post-op de-briefing letting the fatigue of the last few hours finally slacken his shoulders and seep into his body.  Although the beachhead was successful, it was not a very easy thing to do, or to hold.  If nothing else, the Invid were fanatically, and fatalistically tenacious.  Ahh well, such is life, he supposed, especially in these trying and crazy times.

'_I really hope that we will be able to take it easy after this……at least for a little while.  With Hunter's Corps liberating the Haydon system and General Edwards finally showing his true colors and leaguing up with the Regent, we are getting close to the breaking point. Seven months of constant fighting, and not even the people that we had come here to deal with in the first place.  I bet the historians are going to have a ball with the irony of that one.'_

The fighter squadron captain paused in his musings as he was joined by his Beta attachment partner. The Lieutenant had something of a wry smile on his still boyish face.  He was also whistling a little ditty from one of those Japanese cartoons he was so fond of., which was never a good sign. At least he didn't too often over the TAC-net.   The flimsy in his hand wasn't a good sign either.

"So what are you so happy about,  Martin?"

"Heh, well seems I was able to make ace with that sortie. And we shot down over two hundred of those pincers and crabs. Looks like we seriously got somebody's attention from upstairs."

"What do you mean?"

Craig handed over the flimsy, that bemused look still on his face. 

"Here, take a look for yourself, bossman."

Bernard slowed his gait down just a bit as he read the report over, his own look darkening slightly. Martin wasn't kidding when he had said that they had impressed somebody upstairs. But was that really a good thing by the looks of these orders. Probably not, but who was he to complain?

"You sure this is for real, man?"

"As real as Reinhardt's waggly whiskers.  Flynn handed me that as soon as I was cleared on the TARMAC. She said she was gonna give it to you or Janine, but you had already left and Jan's still buttoned up in her ship checking it over.  Man, that second to last pass really did a number to her bird. I am surprised she was even able to make it back to the ship."  Craig scratched his head while he talked, the euphoria from the recent battle finally leaving his own body, even though he knew that he would probably still be wired for the next few hours.

"Yeah I heard that Cartwright and Miller had to get rushed over to surgery.  I can't wait until we get re-enforced with those new Super Alphas they promised us."

"Yeah, that would be really nice. And they could also figure out to armor my Transports so that half of us don't get torn to ribbons during everyone of these puddle-jump missions," a low female voice adds from behind the duo.  Both turn and smile at one of the topics of their earlier comments, Commander Janine Derringer herself.  The petite raven-locked pilot looked up at the other two with yet another fatigued face.  Unlike the fighter pilots, she did look like she had been drug thru hell over the course of the last sixteen and a half hours.

"Yeah, I guess that  would be nice, then we could actually not have to worry so much about keeping the "cranes" covered so closely," Craig mused aloud as they approached the door to the briefing room. "Babysitting those birds isn't exactly the easiest way to pull the hammer on "slugs", if you know what I mean.  Besides, we need boats that can survive more than one or two kamikaze pincer ships.  Or at least give you guys something with a little "Oomph" to fight back with."

"You know we have been asking for that for months now."

"Make that years."

"Well, they feel that the LEGIOS teams assigned to each boat are usually sufficient enough as a deterrent for the Horizonts to be any more heavily armed than they are.  Just think about it, do we really want Atkins trying to chase down every Pincer in the sky just because he has a ship defense laser on his fuselage?"

Brandon then stepped thru the doors before his friend or his wife could shoot back a reply, a smile on his rugged face.  That smile faded slightly upon him taking in the faces of those already present in the briefing room. Some of those faces he already knew, but there were quite a few of them he didn't immediately recognize, but by their unit patches and shoulder pips, knew what they were doing, even if they were GROPOS. He nodded to the other two Squadron Commanders and the ranking Army officers as he took his seat.

"I thought we were going to a de-briefing, not another war council session," Craig leaned over and whispered as soon as he took his seat on his CO's right, Janine taking one on the left.

"So did I," Brandon whispered back as the briefing staff entered the room and began to take their places at the head of the rows of chairs, and Major General Caruthers took his traditional place at the podium.  

Major General Elliott Caruthers was known as one of the more pragmatic warhorses currently in the REF command stable, coming up from the ranks of the Mechanized Infantry and Destroid Corps during the First Robotech War.  While he was on the latter end of middle age, he still carried himself like a career soldier and had been known to mix it up with his men and women during some of the earlier campaigns in the war.  His steely blue gaze swept over the officers in attendance as he began to speak in his low, slightly southern drawl.

"Good evening ladies and gentleman.  First, let me congratulate all of you on a job well done. The lightning raid on the Invid hive complex on Graja III has completely neutralized the target and has been considered a rousing and complete success by High Command.  The mop-up operations are expected to last another 72 to 96 hours, and then the battle group will be breaking orbit to rejoin the main fleet. The population of the Graja Homeworld would like to extend to us their eternal gratitude, and once they have their infra-structure back up and running, they will be sending envoys to the REF Provisionary Council to work out formal trade and military support agreements."

The slight smile of pride that has been on his face fades as he dims down the light, and a 3-D holo-projector comes to life in front of him on planning table.  Another screen pops onto the wall display behind him as two junior officers begin handing out sealed order packets.

"Before any of you ask, yes, we do have another assignment before us.  I will not lie to any of you and tell you that this is going to be an easy assignment, or promise you that all of you will be coming back, should you all decide to take on this mission. Before I continue, does anyone have any objections to being included in this mission?"

The general scans the crowd and notices the uniformity of the naval combat wing pilots and army combat officers as they watch him, not a one seeming to want to be left out of the mission."

_'Ahh, a good bunch, and eager to get this over with. Hopefully, with a bit of skill and a lot of luck they may actually get this wish If Intel and Hunter are correct, and we can actually catch both that Sleazebag Edwards and the Head slug himself together at the same time.'_ Caruthers thought with an inner smile of pride.  He hated to send these "kids" out to do the job he should have been leading himself, but this was their time, and it was what they were trained for.  Now if they would all only come back from it.

"We have finally discovered the location of the Invid Homeworld, Optera, courtesy of our counterparts within the Karbarran military. Elements of General Breetai's Zentraedi battle armada  are already en-route to the planet, and we have been selected to add our presence to the combat zone.  We will be joining the SDF Jutland battle group when we reach system.  However, we do not want to reach the system blind, especially since the expected Invid defenses around their Homeworld will be expected to be three to five times as tenacious as that around Tirol..  Therefore, we have been requested to send a small unit to conduct a force recon of the Opteran system, and to target and map out probable landing zones and targets."

The general again paused to allow this new information sink into the crowd before him.  After a thirty second pause and quite a bit of murmuring, a hand shot up from the second of the four rows of  assembled officers. A destroid pilot or military specialist from the unit patch.

"Pardon me, General, just how big of a recon force are we talking here, and composed of what? Is it going to just be a quick fly-by, or are we planning on dropping down ground assets as well?"

"Good question, Major," the general replied quickly, re-gaining the initiative. "And I will try to answer them as best as I can. We are looking at both ground and air based recon drops, hopefully of a Combined-Arms company size or a bit smaller.  We are looking at using the R&D's new "cloaking" technology on all vehicles and equipment that will be assigned that uses proto-culture, since it has been proven that the Invid seem to track our equipment by our energy emissions."

Another hand shot up from the back row of the crowd."

"Yes, Lieutenant."

The lanky,  slightly pale man in the lab coat with the goldbars on his shoulders stands up, re-settling his glasses on his face as he asks his question.

"Doctor Graffson,  Alien Studies Division. Is this mission volunteer only, or will only certain persons be selected for this General?  Also, is this strictly a pop and drop, or are we going to be down on the ground long enough to gain more long-term data as well?"

Caruthers smiled as the researcher sat back down.  Good question, real good question, and he hoped his answer didn't disappoint this crowd too badly, or perhaps only some elements of it from what he had seen so far.

"Yes, this mission is volunteer priority, since the survivability, and success of this operation is critical for the coming campaign. We want people who are willing to do what it takes to get the mission done, and get out, no matter what the costs.  Your job will consist of going in, getting intel on a variety of sites around the planet via various drop points, staying on the ground long enough to assess strength and defensive capability, and then get out, re-grouping in the outer system.   Now, do we have any volunteers for this?"

Caruthers quieted down again as a junior army captain walked up and stood beside him, a clipboard in hand.  For a few moments, there was no movement as everyone regarded their neighbor, or the un-opened packets before them.  Then the Major who had spoken before stood up.

"Major Darmouth,  Second Company, Seventeenth ATAC, Mechanized Infantry.  My unit volunteers for the ground reconnaissance of the Opteran Homeworld.  My unit has performed this mission before, and we know how to handle ourselves…..adequately….in the field when it comes to going into hot zones and coming back."

Caruthers smiles and nods to the Captain who then jots down the information from the dark complected officer.

"Are you a Cyclone Unit or a destroid Unit Major?"

"Combined Arms, sir. Two platoon of destroids, two platoons of Cyclones, and my headquarters platoon, which is also Cyclone trained.  All we need air assets and a way to get on the planet intact."

"Good. Pick your ten best destroid pilots and top fifty Cyclone operatives. Doctor Graffson, are you willing to accompany the Major and his men on this operation?"

The scientist coughed before speaking. He recalled the last few times that he had been assigned to elements of the Combat Branches of the REF, and how often he was frustrated by his in-ability to complete his own mission in furthering the understanding of the Invid's symbiotic relationship with the Proto-culture flower of Life and their bio-organic technomancy.  He also remembered the last two times he had gone out into the field, both times with elements of Darmouth's "IronWalkers". While he had survived the missions and was able to accomplish all goals both times, he had to fall back on his combat training more times than he had cared to.  However, on the good side, they did know how to keep him protected and respected the fact that he actually did have a mission that wasn't necessarily military in scope.

"Jawohl, General. That arrangement should be more than acceptable."

"Good deal, Doctor. Now who do we have for the air asset……"

Janine stood up and spoke next, interrupting Caruthers, rare for her but she knew she had heard a challenge in the military specialist's voice as he made his statement about his unit's abilities.

"Commander Derringer, 148th Transport Squadron.. I offer my flight of Horizonts to the mission. We have more combat time under fire and less ships lost to enemy fire than any other rapid transport unit in the fleet."

"Horizonts, eh?  Give me the names of your two best crews, and we will go with them."

"Yessir, That would be my own crew, " Jan replied with a knowing smile. " And Lieutenant Commander Youngman's crew."

"Do you have any preference for who provides your fighter CAP escort?," the general asked.

"Yes she does, General Caruthers." Brandon gave his wife a brief look before speaking again. "Seventeenth ATAC,  Diamondbacks VFW. First and third flights are at full strength."

"Good to hear, Captain.  First flight should be sufficient for this Operation.  You will go ahead and grab the file folders marked Zone 4-23-Alpha-2.  That will be your operational theater of operation. This mission is classified Z-3 Black.  Please only pass the information that you will find there amongst the final pilots and crews that will be selected to carry out this mission. Your teams will be shipping out in forty-eight hours, as soon as we get your mecha re-fitted and loaded."

The general then turns and glances over his adjutant's shoulder, then looks up at the other assembled officers. 

"Thank you for your time everyone.  This meeting is concluded,  You are all dismissed."

With that, the general and his general staff filed out of the room, followed by many of the other officers and pilots. Brandon spied his army opposite for this mission gathering his own things and talking with a brown haired First Lieutenant also sporting the IronWalkers logo on his shoulder patch.  The two stop talking as Derringer walks forward, and wait to see what he has to say.

"Hello there, I'm Brandon Derringer, your fighter escort leader. It'll be a real pleasure serving with you guys."

"Hmm, I bet. Major Ryan Darmouth. This is my second in command, First Lieutenant Marquis Tribanuiski. He'll be in charge of the destroid contingent for this operation."

The other man merely nods and then re-adjusts his beret as he checks over the paperwork in his hand, re-shuffling a few pages.

"So,  Major, do your people have any special accommodations or anything that my people should know about before we get started?"

Darmouth eyes the burlier man for a long moment before answering.  He picked up his unit baseball cap and placed it on his head as he spoke.

"Actually, I do have one. Make sure you flyboys don't forget your jobs, and get us down to the planet in one piece.  We will handle the rest. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go brief my soldiers, then check up on my wounded."

With that, the two REF army officers brush past, are joined by a senior NCO, and the trio leave the flyers behind.  Brandon watched them go with a bemused look even as Jan slipped an arm around his back. Shaking off the odd feeling, he smiled down at her.

"Let's go grab some chow. I don't want to have to think too much about this mission and all the problems that it is going to be until tomorrow morning."

"You're on dearest.  After all, I much prefer to spend my last free evening for awhile with you and a nice bottle of the sparkly."

Laughing lowly, the couple exit out of the briefing room as well.

SKGà Well as I said before, like it or hate it, just review it!!

Oh yeah, to be continued…::enter Robotech theme music::


	4. Chapter 03: Mission Preparations

Robotech:  Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Three: Mission Preparations

By SithKnight-Galen

SK-G: Yes, here I am with another disclaimer and series of babblings by me, the great muse of this long-winded epic in the making.  First, let me say I do not own Robotech or any of its affiliates.  Although, I would not mind having my name on the copyright patents for the Cyclone, they are not mine.  They belong to Carl Macek and all those moneybags in secret locations around the world.  Ahh well.

Second point, please people, how will I know if this is even worth the effort, the blood (just look at the nubs that were once fingers), the tears (like when I lost the fourth chapter pre-write or the original character list was eaten by my hard drive), the time, and effort (Just ask my friends).  Therefore, I call upon you, loyal readers of fan-fiction everywhere, please post your reviews, comments, and flames.  Besides, right now we can use all the heat we can get where I am at.  Ice and sleet are not your friends.  They lie, they aren't..

Now, on with the Story!  **Enter Macross Saga Opening Theme**

*********

Ryan Darmouth was not a person who personally enjoyed waiting until the last minute make sure that everything was ready to go at Zero hour.  He had learned from hard experience that one could never have enough preparations when planning a critical operation like the one that he had slated for his people the day before.  He had pretty much made his selections as far as his people and resources were concerned almost as soon as he was given the numbers he had to play with, but he wasn't so sure that  he could say the same thing for his naval counterparts.  He knew that the _Diamondbacks_ were a top-flight unit, as least based upon their reputation, but he had never recalled actually working with them directly. He knew that they had a history as extensive as the Skull, Ghost, and Wolf Pack Squadrons, but that was talk in his mind.  At least until he had seen them in action.  Marc and Tony both said that transport crew _were _one of the best, though, so that was one less thing that he had to worry too much about.

He continued on his way, lost in thought as he went over munitions, logistics, and personnel checks.  He was still curious as to whether or not the brainiacs over at R&D had cooked up some micronized version of the infamous "Vindicator Cloaking Devices" that were being installed on some of the Veritech Fighters.  He remembered how they had tried it once before, with the 38th ATAC being the testbed unit for it, and that had far less than desirable results, from the after-action reports that he had viewed, and the wreckage of most of the command platoon that he helped to dig out and identify from Renauld.  He really hoped that the labrats had made some significant _improvements_ since that time.

'Well, the Cykes are all being looked over now, the team has already gotten the head's up……all the personal gear is being loaded onto the transports within the next two or three hours, and everyone one doesn't have to worry about going over final check outs on the new systems that we are supposed to be carrying in for the next couple hours.  Mission objectives seem simple enough, but why do I have a feeling that this kind of thing is never as simple as Command likes to make it sound. Crap, I am just worrying myself into an early grave. I know that the team is ready, I just need to find something to distract me for a bit, I guess.'

Makes a left turn in the corridor in the Armored Company's territory, nodding to the few officers and enlisted men that he passes, giving out the obligatory salutes as needed, his mind now on a new destination.  His naturally quick pace soon has him in the general common recreation area of the ship, and he enters the Gymnasium.  Ryan quickly and efficiently changes into a workout outfit consisting of  a black sleeveless bodysuit and weighted gloves and fighting boots.  He then goes to the min dance studios/dojos and enters his favorite one.  He is surprised to see that he is not alone, but a knowing smile covers his shock very quickly.

"I figured you would be here sooner or later."

"Oh, am I that predictable, Doctor?"

"That depends, Major, " Doctor Abraham Zhao responded quietly with more than a hint of wry humor even as he finished another Tai-chi kata. "I have noticed that this seems to be your retreat anytime we have to get prepped for a particularly hairy mission. Although my being here now is purely coincidental, I assure you."

"Humph, I bet it is, Abe.  You or Marc or Tony always seem to pop yourselves into my practice sessions.  Not that I am that surprised from you three, though.  So what is on your mind?"Darmouth falls into one of his own warm-up katas of more rapid kicks, punches, spins and weaves.  _"And just how much am I going to like this?,'_ he added to himself.  They were always doing this, as if they were afraid to leave him alone or something before missions, especially after what happened on that last operation for REF Intelligence in the EBSIS.  Although that had happened over five years ago, and Ryan himself had come to terms with his loss, the three musketeers couldn't seem to, or didn't think that he could.  At least Corps did look out for the Corps.

"Well, actually I was kind of looking for a sparring partner, truth be known.  I know that you are one of the few people aboard that can give me a run for my money, and well, this mission has me a bit …..disturbed for some reason,"  Abe quipped, laughing slightly sheepishly as he went over to one of the two black duffle bags against the far wall.

"Well, then obviously you do know me after all, Doctor Zhao. So, oh masterful one, which treatment will you be administering to me today, good old fisticuffs, blunt stick beat-downs or we get funky and play with the practice CADS?"

Ryan catches the Bokken tossed his way with a smirk, debates about whether to don his full protective gear, and then discards the idea as he tightens up the laces to his gloves and his bandana.  He then watches the field surgeon walk onto the mats in the center of the three walled room, donning forearm protective pads and wielding a practice sword of his own.  The other man made a few practice cuts with his blade, each one timed and measured perfectly. While Darmouth was no slouch in the various arts of warfare, he honestly felt that he had to constantly strive to push himself beyond himself when dealing with the quiet and seemingly un-assuming medico.  Testing the weight of the blade first with his left hand, then switching to his off-hand and finding it to his satisfaction, the military specialist steps forward onto the mat himself.

"Ready, old cantankerous one?"

"Hai, Grasshopper." 

With that, the slender, albeit quick Asian man moves quickly forward, and almost before Darmouth can react, goes into a series of very fast, fluid and aggressive strikes.  Fortunately, for the moment at least, they were also fairly readable and blockable. Darmouth blocked the initial barrage, and then launched a counter-attack of his own, stepping up the tempo just a beat. Zhao then tried for a close in attack, and surprised Darmouth by doing a quick knee-kick push away combination on him that pushed Ryan back a few steps, but not before he was able to connect with the doctor's arm.

_'Heh. Too easy…he must be slipping in his .' _"Uhhnnn!" 

Ryan's mental congratulations were short lived as Zhao spun down and out with his right leg, sweeping Darmouth's legs out from under him before could react to the change in tactics. Ryan's breath was knocked out of him as he thumped to the ground in spite of the matting. The saracen man blinked back the stars and then went wide-eyed as he rolled his head away from the follow up strike that yanked off his bandana.  Spinning his own leg up and around, he gave the other man a good mule kick to the gut as he picked himself back up, rolling away to gain some breathing room.

"I see you are finally getting back into that combined arms fighting I hammer into you."

"Well, I was under the impression that this was a honorable match, Abe-san."

"You mean before a crowd, you know I have to put on a good show."

Darmouth then realized what Zhao meant when he caught movement from the side of the room, and realized belatedly that they fourth wall was actually open aired to allow viewing down to the pool and aerobic rooms below and that they had indeed picked up a bit of a crowd.  Well, if a show was what they wanted, it seemed that they had to please.  Then he saw HER. What the hell was she doing here?  Ryan was so distracted that he almost missed the first two strikes Abe threw his way before he re-gained his composure and focus on the fight at hand, but not before he took a pair of solid strikes to his ribs that he knew were going to leave marks.

_'Focus, don't even worry about HER right now!'_

Gritting his teeth as he was slowly being backed up, the Military Specialist decided to start fighting back before he lost this match completely. Switching to one of his old forms from his childhood Fencing School, he flipped the Bokken around and bounced onto the balls of his feet, switching his profile into something smaller as he swatted aside the asian man's blade. He then followed up with a series of 10-2 strikes to push his opponent back. Zhao, caught momentarily flatfooted, did not see the 

lightning quick sidekick come up to connect with his chin until he was already reeling backwards from it, and Darmouth's blade was already striking at his now exposed throat. Out of desperation, Abe brought his blade inside and under Ryan's outstretched arms and thrust his own blade across his friend's chest to where both blades made contact with their targets at the same point.  Both men paused for a moment, and looked at the placement of the stopped blades, and then their own bodies.  With nothing better to do, they both began to chuckle as some of the people in the assembled audience began to clap and give out low calls of amazement.

"So,..umm, do we call this one a draw, Major?"

"That sounds like a plan, Doc." Ryan quipped with a smile, even though his eyes were on something else entirely. 

Abe glanced past the milling crowd to see what had caused his CO that kind of distraction in the middle of a match, and his eyes focused down on the pool below, and the slender woman with the fiery red hair getting out of the pool, and his own countenance darkened noticeably as he glanced back over to Ryan.

'Aww, man, not her…I thought he was over her…'  the doctor thought, recognizing the signs and hoping he could head off that storm before it broke. Perhaps it was time to steer the boss away from that particular sore point. 

"Want to go at it again, Ryan?   Practice with the CADs, perhaps?"

"Umm, I don't think I can right now…Umm, something's come up..," Ryan remarked absently as he was already moving towards the pool area.  He moved thru the crowd, tossing the practice sword behind him and leaping down the overhanging walkway to the pool area below.

Abe turned and watch and saw that the woman had seen Ryan as well, and after scowling for a moment, seemed to reset a mask onto her lovely face and was now hurrying off to the women's changing area.  So much for distracting their fearless leader. Marc and Tony were going to have his hide when they found out about this. Sighing, he collected the practice weapons and the bags.  Why did it always have to be about a woman?  At least she wouldn't be on the mission, so Ryan could focus on that instead of his past mistakes.  Hopefully.

**********

While Ryan really was not expecting to run into her, he figured that it was going to happen eventually, actually, since he had followed her career  for the last few months from a distance, he still wasn't prepared for it.  Ever since the fall-out, they had been avoiding each other like the plague, and he thought that was the status quo as she had wanted it.  That was what she claimed, even though he wanted the chance to make it right.  His old man had warned him about getting involved with a military woman with her kind of background, especially during wartime, but he was always one that had to learn these kinds of lessons the hard way.  He only wished that there was some way that he could make right the unforgivable wrong that she perceived that had done to her.  Call him hopeless, but Ryan felt that, if given the chance, he could still correct his past errors and get things back to good.  However, he realized, it was going to be hard to do if she was going to keep running from him and never returning his communiqués.  Even now it took him a good minute and a half to catch up to her, and oddly he was already out of breath despite the short sprint.

"Angelina!" He called into the Women's locker room as he spun around while trying to catch his breath.

"What do you want, Ryan?," a controlled, yet slightly angry voice came from behind and to the right of him, making Darmouth jump slightly, then wince at his own nervousness. He turned to the voice and took in the sight of Angelina Spencer.  She still looked the same as he remembered her to be, even though he did notice what looked like a bruise on the base of her collarbone and some shadows under her eyes.  That was when he noticed her eyes again. They were no longer the soft brownish-green hue he fondly recalled staring into on so many occasions, but were hardened ambers attempting to bore thru him.

"I..I wanted to talk, to apologize for what happened, Angie."

"So you chased me into a women's changing room to apologize.  Wasn't flooding my answering machine and the cards and other stuff enough? I thought that you agreed to leave me alone? Don't you understand, I said it was over!" Angelina's glare turned a few shades colder and more bitter.

"Yeah, you said it was over without even giving me a chance to explain, or even try to prove that it wasn't me. After all, who was the one who said that I did that, your fath…"

Spencer exploded, moving up to within inches of contrite army officer.

"Do not bring my father into this!  This is about you and me, not him!"

"Wrong, dead wrong, Angie," Ryan bit back coldly, his own temper beginning to come to the surface.  You know he had every reason to hate me from word go and you and me both know that he would do anything and everything in his power to make me the bad guy."

"Bull, and we both know it Ryan. You were going to let him die just to save your own pride.  And then there was us.  And even now you are trying to punish me.  But that is the past and dead now. Let it stay there, Ryan. Just go away, please."  

The naval officer crossed her arms, but stood her ground.  She had gone a bit red between dealing with this confrontation that she was dreading since she found out that Darmouth had been posted on THIS ship and the heat of the room.  Thoughts of the past also has surfaced in spite of her best efforts, and she really didn't want to be reminded of them now when she was trying to get focused on the mission ahead.  At least the biggest mistake of her life wouldn't be along for the ride. Ryan was attached to Operations Command after all, and they rarely sent their officers into the field. 

Darmouth's eyes narrowed to slits momentarily as he felt a rush of impotent hostility wash over him.  He pushed it down to the pit of his stomach with savage determination.  He wanted to have this out, he needed to have this out, but once more, he felt as if he had backed himself into the proverbial corner with this woman.  However, he had already committed to this course of action, and if this mission did go afoul, then this may be the last time to find out what he had done so wrong, how he had screwed up the best thing in his life so badly.

"And why do you want me to go away?  Will that make it easier for you to forget me, or what we were together?  You were the best thing to happen to me, and your leaving did more damage than any Invid plasma bolt ever could.  Why can't you just be straight up with me here?  You claim that I was never wanting to hear your side of things, well here I am now …….Tell me, why do you hate me so much?"

" I tried to tell you, and you didn't listen then, so why should I believe that you could change even now?," Angie shot back lowly, her voice perfectly controlled, but a hint of the deep hurt she felt still dripping past her barriers.  "You are still acting like you can change the world and control me and everything around you.  Don't you get it, when I said I wanted out, I meant it then, and I do now. There is nothing else to talk about, now get out!"

At this point those light brown orbs were beginning to go green alright, but that was kind of dangerous considering the tears were not ones of joy. Of rage or grief, Ryan wasn't exactly sure, but he had a good feeling it was mixture of both.  The tears brimming in her eyes and that scowl on her face was too much for him, and he did the only thing his mind was allowing him to do, retreat.  He wanted to sweep her into his arms, he wanted to beg for her forgiveness for any wrong-doings he had done, he wanted to walk into a squadron of Invid Pincers not caring about the results, but the one thing he didn't want, to cause her yet more pain, seemed to be the only thing that he was capable of.

"Fine….I'll go, " the decorated officer said in a low, humble voice that only hinted at his own pain. "But this is not over yet, for either of us.  I will prove to you that I love you, and will never hurt you…and even if you don't love me anymore, that I will always be there for you."

'Unless of course we all get pasted on Optera…NO!!…Even the entire Invid horde cannot keep me from you!'

He turned and walked out with slumped shoulders and a hung head. At the door, he paused and turned, noticing that she was still watching him, her glasses now on and her face not quite as hard as when they were in each other's faces.  She looked like she was broken down more than anything and it took everything in Darmouth's power not to sweep her into his arms, to protect her from herself at this point.

"Just remember this, though, I am only leaving this for now because you ask me to, but you do mean everything to me, and I will wait for you, no matter how long it takes." 

He then walked out, leaving those words echoing along the now deserted shower area. Angelina stared at the door for a few moments, blinked away the tears and gathering her things.  She tried to push Ryan to the back of her mind, but it wasn't much use. He had ruined her mood with just his presence, and while she loved him dearly, part of her right now wanted nothing more than for him to walk out an airlock without a vac-suit.   She had a mission to plan for, and didn't need him back in her life complicating matters. She walked into the showers and jumped under the tension releasing waterfall.

'Why now, and why him……does he even care what he is doing to me by even trying to be around me… I know that he is trying to be sincere in his own way, but how do I know that he is not playing on my heartstrings yet again…could even afford to let him get close enough to hurt me again? Do I want him to get that close again?  Why can't I get him out of my system, even after all the grief that we caused each other?  Curse him, why can't he just go away and leave alone?'

Spencer then left the shower, feeling physically better after her aquatic workout and cool-off, but still roiling emotionally. She got dressed into her normal REF issue shipboard wear, the under flightsuit, and then headed back to the pilot's area and the hangers, slinging her workout bag over her shoulder.  She smiled to a few fellow pilots when she had to, and saluted primly to the few senior officers that she had passed by, but kept to herself for the most part.  She got to the amidships main shaft hangers, and entered them like she owned the place.  She was hoping that her fighter was repaired, but feared that it would probably never fly again after the belly-flopping and near gutting it took on the planet below.  Hopefully, losing her wingman, getting busted up in that awful crash, and running for her life from Invid for almost three hours before being picked up by the destroid unit that, ironically, she was supposed to be flying cover for, were really all worth it. That was not exactly an experience that she wanted to repeat anytime this lifetime.

The fire maned woman walked straight over to her fighter, and walked slowly around it, petting it lovingly in the process.  Surprisingly, her boat was going to be able to touch the sky again, even after the extensive pounding that it had taken.  There were a series of plasma-induced pockmarks running from just behind the nosecone all the way to just aft of the pilot's compartment.  As she inspected that damage closer, Angie realized just how lucky she was.  She looked thru the hole that one of the said plasma blasts had created just under her canopy., and realized just how lucky she truly was.  In her mind's eye, she could see that the trajectories of at least four of the blasts should have come through the cockpit and her body.  The one she was looking at should have decapitated her by itself.  She poked her hand thru it cautiously, as if she would be bitten by something on the other side. Whistling lowly to herself just loud enough for the techs who were working on her Veritech to take a notice.  Angie herself did not really acknowledge them, being so absorbed in her mecha's                                                                                                                                                              condition.  She was at the aft of her ship, examining the extensive repair work that had already been done on the legs/thrusters and Beta connecting joints when the senior officers to her fighter wing entered.

"Well, well would you look at that….the final days must really be upon us, because I see that the dead truly do walk amongst us once more," quipped Craig Martin as he dabbed his youthful face one more time with the towel draped over his shoulders.

At that Captain Derringer smiled knowingly at his XO, the third VT pilot with them suddenly giving the two senior officers a bemused look as his brown-blond eyebrow raised up.

"What's up chief?" Lieutenant j.g . Johnny Whetstone asked with just a bit of trepidation in his voice.  He may not have been a member of the Diamondbacks, a recent replacement from Colonel Wolfe's infamous Wolfpack when they folded back to Earth space, but  he did recognize when someone was about get some bad news, and that look in both of his commander's eyes seemed to confirm it. "What are you two planning?"

"Well," began Brandon, still looking at the Alpha pilot and her ragged looking craft. "We were trying to figure out who to fill the last slot on the flight roster, and well, you need a new Alpha-mate since you seemed to have just burned through your third one.  And it seems that Lieutenant Spencer there lost her Beta-wingmate, so guess who's getting assigned to each other for this mission?"

"You are joking, aren't you? She's an "Ice Queen", sir."

"I think that it's a great choice, Cap. Besides, _Sci-fi_, you need someone with her temperament to keep you in line, and she needs someone like you to keep her from making too many stupid risks.  Besides, we need someone other than _Merlin_ to play Mouse for all the Invid planetside."

"I know you guys think that this is a good idea," Johnny whined. "But why her, she hates men, she's condescending, she has even worse luck with wingmen than I do, and she considers me to be a threat to her Ace Status.  Are you two trying to get me Killed!?!?"

Martin smirked as Brandon replied. The junior officer did bring up good points, but he was overlooking the fact that above all else, Spencer was a professional, and she did know how to follow orders.

"If I were trying to get you killed, I would have assigned you to the ground forces or partnered you up with Ishitaga.  I am sure that you both would love to be attached at the hip again, Ensign."

Johnny blanched at that suggestion.

"I didn't think so.  Besides, as long as you guys stick to your training, and don't let egos get in the way of completing the mission, we should all make it back in one piece.  Besides, orders are orders, all VT teams are going in paired up, even your fearless leaders."

Whetstone grumbled something under his breath as they walked further into the hangers.

'Why do I always get stuck with the crazy ones, then blamed for it whenever they seem to get themselves killed….and then I get assigned to the looniest of the bunch to boot…Well maybe not that loony, but she doesn't exactly raise my confidence levels either…oh well, orders are orders, and with those cloaking devices, we might be able to survive this, and then I can get a real wingmate…..even if this one does have one of the highest kill counts in the wing…'

"Oh man, you guys won't believe this!"

The trio stopped and turned to Lindsey Niequiest, normally considered the more level headed of the Niequiest duo, flushed, with a slightly wild-eyed look, and her braided hair slightly akimbo as she took the few seconds of silence to catch her breath. It was then that Brandon caught onto the fact that she was still wearing her aerobic outfit.

_'Okay, what just happened ..NOW?'_  The Squadron Commander felt his stomach suddenly drop a few inches.

"What's up? We just got upgraded from snoop and scout to hunter-killer status?"

"No wait, the Hunters and the rest of the Sentinels are back, aren't they?," shot out Craig with a slightly boyish smile.

Narrowing her eyes momentarily, the flight leader quieted both men with a look alone.  Derringer merely waited patiently, quietly amused at the fact the other two could be cowed so easily.

"The 19th just got put on alert!  I thought that we were shipping out with them.  What's the big deal.  I was up in the gym for the big flare up between Angelina and some army officer, and just after that excitement, some MPs came in, and rounded up quite a few of the cycle-jocks and herded them off, too. So cap, what's the word, I thought we weren't supposed to leave for another two days?"

"We aren't."

"So what's going on? Why did they quarantine off our Army contingent?," Whetstone asked somewhat incredulously.

"Good question, and I bet that trio of monkey-suits can tell us, from their purposeful gait." Martin said, inclining his head towards the approaching suits with GMP shoulder badges."

"Oh, I bet this is gonna be good," Whetstone muttered just loud enough for the other pilots to hear.He then got real quiet and played the part of your typical good soldier as the Global Military Police Officers came forward, the senior-most, a Master Sergeant from his lapel insignia, saluting Derringer and the other assembled officers."

"Captain Brandon Derringer."

"Yes?"

"These are for you and the other members of your Tactical Fighter Squadron.  New mission orders," the Senior Noncom said in a very flat voice that was typical of career soldiers in his line of work.  He then handed over a sealed packet of papers with more than a little force as he smacked it into Derringer's outstretched hand. The other two MPs simply watch with that casual alertness that made most people, including the two junior officers, more than a bit guilty and uneasy. 

'Oh, I have a feeling that this is not going to bode very well,' Brandon mused after watching the MPs pivot and then exit out of the fighter bay.  He then noticed that the normal amount of noise that was common to the fighter repair and storage bays had dropped off noticeably in time it took for the suits to arrive and give him this new special delivery. 'Oh well, better get this over with.'  Looking around once as the other Diamondbacks crowded about to see what this new present was about.  Derringer's eyes went over the fourteen pages of forms twice before he looked up and at his squadron mates, his sky blue eyes now steeled over. 

"Get the squadron assembled, Commander. Ensign, Go find my wife and tell her she might get down to our ready room, and get her people assembled, too.  We have just been given the "green light" and we are go in 12 hours and 48 minutes and counting."

"See, I told you it was big news," Lindsay remarked to Martin as she headed towards her quarters.

"Yeah, it was big news alright, but why couldn't have been GOOD news for once," Martin quipped back as the quartet separated to carry out their new orders, the XO making a beeline for the currently calm and sufficiently distracted Lieutenant Spencer who was now discussing something with the chief mechanic and Ensign Maschomismo.

"Great, there goes another good night of sleep. At least I can pack my pillow for the long flight," groused Johnny as he walked away and towards the shuttle section.  "By the way, I claim the purple couch!," he half turned and yelled from across the fighter bay. _'I ain't giving up my shut-eye for ANY slug!'_

Brandon watched the others with a reflective eye as they separated to carry out their orders.  Now that things had suddenly been bumped by almost a day and a half, Derringer got an odd feeling of a clock ticking away just behind his back, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end for a few minutes.  _'Get a grip, old man!  We've done dozens of missions like this, this one will be a pie job as well.'  _As he walked back to his office, however, he could not shale the feeling that this mission was going to be decidingly different, and that they all may not come back from this one.

**********

And thus ends the next installment of the Pyrrhic WarDance chronicles. I hope that everyone is enjoying the mind trip so far.  Red Shinto, thank you for your comments, and for the record, I am to please.  Well until next time, same time zone, same web site.  Manyana.


	5. Chapter 04: And So It Begins

Robotech:  Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Four: And So It Begins

By SithKnight-Galen

SK-G: Alrighty, let's see if I can pick up the tempo any here and see what I can do with a real combat scene, ja ne?  The last chapter was kinda angsty, I know, but I did say that this great project of "kick the Pincer" proportions would be just that.  Now let's get on with the action and adventure, shall we?

A/N2: No, I do not own Macross, Robotech, MOSPEADA or any of the people, events or equipment from it, although I would not mind my own Gallant H-90 with rifle stock.  I would just keep it as a trophy over my computer, really.  Right next to my lightsaber and my Grimoire.  Also, feel free to send Reviews, flames, or just asides about life in general.  Even agents of the Dark Side do get curious as to how they are doing sometimes.

Now on with the Story.. *Enter Macross Theme* 

*******

Captain Brandon Derringer checked the straps to his crash couch one more time.  You never could be too careful after all.  Being bounced around by turbulence or an out of control aircraft had been the death of more than one pilot thru the ages, and he didn't particularly care to be added to that statistic if he could help it. _Baelanos_ looked over at the other assembled fighters going thru their pre-flight checks on the flight deck, and could not help but pray that all of them would really make it back from this mission.  The other seven LEGIOS combos were already on the prep deck, and the flight crews were conducting the time honored tradition of going over everything with a fine tooth comb for the five hundredth time.  The two Horizont shuttles were launching from the forward deck and then would wait for the escort squadron to form up around them before making the short fold jump into Optera space.  And then a short hop in, a quick recon of the planet and surrounding system, a quick jump out, and everything would be over and kosher.  Supposedly. But Brandon knew how often military operations really went according to plan.

_'Maybe I am just getting to cynical in my old age…..after all, how many more battles are we going to have to go blazing into before we can hang up our belts for good? How many more sacrifices are we going to have to make in order for this to finally be over?  God, first the Zentraedi, now the Invid…and from what Intel tells us, we still have to somehow pray that we can beat the Masters back to Earth go thru this dance of death at least one more time with them, if we don't let our own hubris and small-mindedness do their dirty work for them first.'_

Brandon pulled his thoughts back to focusing on getting his own VT into launch position as the CT officer signaled him into position.  As the twin golden rods stopped pulling him forward and crossed into a holding "X", a voice came thru his helmet, loud and clear."

"Diamondback Lead, you are clear for take-off in thirty.  Your departure co-ordinates and waypoint flight plan has already been confirmed with the CIC."

"Thank you flight control. Diamondback Lead is ready for take-off."

"Good hunting Diamondback Lead.  We will be in position to pick you up on your signal. _Tokugawa_ Main Flight Control Out."

"Roger Tower," Brandon replied, smirking slightly as it occurred to him for not the first time that the BETA component pilots seemed to have it easy on the take-offs and landings procedures.  He didn't dwell on it too long as the CT was already flashing for him to get ready for the catapults to sling him off the TARMAC and into deep space.  He felt the sudden increase in G-force even thru his pressurized flight suit as the ship was launched into space, going from zero to mach 5 in mere seconds.  He quickly leveled off  and brought his ship around as he waited for the rest of his squadron to form up and then head off to the rendezvous co-ordinates.

_'two, four, three, seven, eight, five..and six makes the full roster….'_

***

"WhoooHAhhh!!" Came over the comm.-net as Diamondback Five was flung out of the Ikazuchi Class SDF Battlewagon.  Lieutenant Whetstone always loved the thrill that rapid increases of G-forces always seemed to bring out in him. He took notice that most of the other fighter jocks made at least some sort of comment or reaction to the catapult launches, then he recalled the odd look on his own Alpha component pilot's face.  He knew that she was a good pilot, but it looked almost as if she were afraid of going back out there.

_'It couldn't have been because of that last fur-ball over Graja, could it?' _ John thought as he continued to observe her on his side screen.  She seemed to come back to grips with the job pretty quick alright, but that still didn't mean that he shouldn't worry about the woman, especially if she also held HIS life in her hands.

"Hey, El-Tee, anything you want to talk about?," He asked over the comm.-net, switching it over to one of the private frequencies so the whole flight couldn't hear them talking, although the CO could always bump in if he needed to.

"No, why do you ask?," came back the all-too-cool and collected reply.  Spencer pivoted her head slightly so that she could look more clearly into the vid-screen after she made some minor course corrections to line her up with the rest of the fighters in a holding pattern formation.

The junior pilot had to think hard and fast for a moment before answering her.  While her temper was not something that was widely talked about in the ready room, her vindictiveness and ability to take things out of context and use them to hold Battle Pod sized grudges were. _'Well, I am the one who walked myself into this….way to go, Otaku.  I knew I should have used a sick day or three and stayed to watch that 'Lost Universe' marathon.'_

"Well, ma'am, you seemed a little..umm, distracted I guess, during the preflight and seemed a bit sick when we launched.  You sure that you are okay?"

Angelina seemed to hesitate before she answered, and a definite sigh was heard on the radio. "As I said, Ensign Whetstone, I am fine.  Those take-offs just get to me a little bit, that's all. They always have. Once I am in the air, I am just fine."  She smiled into the camera, hoping that that would re-assure the other pilot, even if it didn't quite work for her.  "I much prefer take-offs and landings in an atmosphere."

"Ahh, okay. Just it seemed like it might have been more than that. I am not quite a medical doctor or anything, but it seemed like you were about to faint for a minute or two there.  Either that, or have a panic attack."

_'Hmm, great now my wingmate thinks that I am mental, wonderful,'_ Angie thought spitefully.  "No, seriously, I am fine.  Now that we have launched, I am back to being me.  We got a bit of a flight ahead of us, so I guess we should make the most of it."

"Guess your right, El-Tee.  However, if you get bored or something, just give a yell back my way or something.  I'll be playing solitaire or something until we get into Optera space," Whetstone said over the comm-channel, his thoughts split between the condition of his wingmate and the mission ahead. She was definitely hiding something, but he really didn't know if it was his place to pry.  After all, she had passed her psychological and medical reviews and had been a combat pilot for almost three years, so what did he know anyways?  Bah, thinking about it was too much effort that he could spend doing something that might actually relax him a bit before everything began to hit the fan.

Lieutenant Spencer did not answer, as her own mind began to ramble off into it's own direction, playing over again the events of the last two years, and culminating with that encounter in the gymnasium with Ryan.  She remained focused enough on the job at hand to stay in formation as they met up with the Horizonts and moved to the edge of the fleet perimeter, but she kept most of her attention on her own personal life.

_'That stupid, arrogant,…….MAN.  Why in the world did he have to re-enter my life? I thought that he was gone for good, and now I find him on my ship again!  What was he doing there anyways?  It's not like he is still attached to a combat unit or anything, and he is Army, which means he should have minimal contact with me.  So why am I letting him affect me like this then?  What really is going onto me, and with us? Is he still blaming himself for the collapse of the relationship?  Well, good, I hope he is, not like he'll learn anything from his mistakes anyways. No, I shouldn't say that after seeing how he reacted to me yesterday.  Why does he have to make everything so complicated?' _Angelina pondered as she maneuvered her jet thru it's final positioning as the Horizonts began the navcomp checks and cyclic countdowns until the jump to light speed. _'It's not like I am trying to lead him on or anything. He should know by now how I feel, and that nothing he can do or hope to do will change that.  Now if I could only convince myself completely of that, it will all work out.'_

She continued to contemplate the situation that she still found herself in with her personal life, trying to use the quiet time to plan out her next course of action.  She honestly had not expected to see Ryan again, and his sudden re-appearance in her life was something that she felt she did not exactly need to be dealing with just then.  Angie had thought that she had purged those demons from her life, but obviously that wasn't quite the case.  Sighing more to herself than anything else, the young woman tried to push back the turmoil that had decided to plague her life once more to the back of her mind so that she could focus on the mission at hand.  After all, this was her life now, and the past needed to stay buried in the past.  As the ships entered hyperspace, and that odd feeling of displacement overtook her and her wingmates, Angelina actually began to relax.

*******

The CVR-3 combat suit clad officer walked into the tight bridge, his visor up so that he could look at the Horizont's commander without any enhancements and without her having to think he was up to anything.  Too many people had already been claiming that of him lately.  This flight was already making him feel more tense than usual, and not getting his people enough actual downtime with untested equipment and being paired with an unfamiliar naval fighter detachment were not adding to his confidence. 

"Commander Derringer, did all units make it out thru the fold operation intact?"

The transport commander glanced down at her monitors momentarily before addressing the speaker.  While she often wondered the same thing during these operations, having heard some of the horror stories from the SDF-1's ill-fated jump to Pluto-space back 2009, and then the near disastrous jump into Tirol-space that began the current war they were engaged in, Janine felt that she obviously had more faith in their equipment and training than her groundside counterpart at the moment.

"Yes, Major, all units made it thru intact and are all still in formation."

She then glanced up and noticed that the tension was still evident on the dark complected man's face as he continued to stare intently out the front view port and the faint silhouette of a planet off in the far distance.

"Are your people ready?"

"Yes, they are."  Simple, and without any emotion was the reply.

_'Odd, I heard that the man was cold, but it sounds like he is reciting a wake.'_  Janine then did give Darmouth a more intense look.  That was when she noticed the faint wrinkles around the eyes and at the corners of the lips.  And the man didn't look to be more than thirty, if that. _'Just what is he worried about…or better yet, just what does this guy know that the rest of us don't….or is he just being ultra paranoid?'_

"Something on your mind, Major?"

"Hmm," Ryan looked back to the naval officer, his face lightening in it's hardness for a few moments. "Just thinking of what might come to pass, that's all. I have often been accused of being a bit of a worrier of the small details.  Why do you ask?"

"You just seem to be staring awfully hard at our target up there.  We are still close to an hour away from the drop zone and you are already locked into that "thousand yard" stare."

The military specialist smiles at the pilot then, his grim visage gone for the moment.  "Is that so? I wonder why no one ever told me that before?  I never thought that I was that intimidating.  Hmm, I wonder that might have also been one of the reasons…."  His voice then trails off as all humor begins to ebb from his face.

"One of the reasons for what?"

"Nothing of any importance anymore, I suppose.  I guess I am just being cynical with Command's little "snoop and scoot."  I have done of a few of these, and they never turn out as nice and easy as the top brass likes to make it sound."

"Well, this may be that time that is the exception instead of the rule."

"For all of our sakes, I really pray that you are right, Commander." He smiles grimly, then pivots on his heel, and  his armored boots vibrating against the floor as he walks back to the troop assembly area are the only sounds in the cockpit until the access door shuts behind him.

"Man, talk about doom and gloom.  That dude has it in spades," commented Ensign Brody Atkins from his spot on the other side of the cockpit.  He had watched the entire exchange and was not all that confident with the results himself anymore.

"You might want to watch what you say there, kid," Chief Petty Officer Cartwright said just loud enough for both pilots to hear from his own seat.  The veteran loadmaster had had his own misgivings about this kind of mission, but he hadn't voiced it like the outspoken Major had.  That however, did not mean that Rico did not agree with what Ryan had said.  "That man probably has more combat experience than all of us combined.  And he doesn't seem to be the type that would make up something without some real reason."

Janine nodded as she made course corrections on her board.  The loadmaster had made a good point, but he was also a pessemist by nature as well, almost as if the service turned you into one by nature if you lived long enough.  There seemed to be something off on her sensors, but that was here flight officer and co-pilot's areas of overwatch, and they hadn't said anything just yet. 

"And just why do you say that, Chief?  That man was just acting.....spooky, like he was thinking we were all going to our deaths or something.  That ain't exactly the kind of talk I wanna hear when I am going into battle, ya know."

"Yeah, well he wasn't exactly saying that we were going to die, either," the older man retorted, going back to his own sensors. "That man has alot on his mind, and as he said, he had been on a few of these missions, and talking from experience, these things rarely go as planned, especially with us testing this new equipment like this."

"Well, whatever the case, we need to get ourselves focused and back on task.  We are coming up and aroudn the darkside of the moons now, so we need to be prepared for anything.  Hopefully, we will be able to sneak in right under their collective snouts, though."

The elongated diamond crep forward and came closer to the planetary gravity well, the collective crews praying that the cloaking technology was actually doing it's work this time around, and that the Invid really did not detect them as they had hoped.  So far, everything appeared to be going as planned, but appearances could well be decieving.  Janine split her attention between monitoring the unusually muted fighter TAC channel and her own sensor boards, torn between just wanting a horde of pincerships to go ahead and make their move and be done with it, and being able to successfully sneak in and complete this mission without even a single slug noticing any of them.

"Commander, we have contact in system," Derringer's flight engineer and communications specialist stated suddenly from her rear post, breaking the spell of silence that had crept over them.  "It appears to be SDF class...I think it's the _Valivarre_."

"Get confirmation on that.  See if you can find out what the Zentraedi are doing here" Janine growled as she began making her course corrections to line herself up with the planet growing in her view screen.  Fortunately, this could be used to their advantage, between the Zentraedi under Lord Breetai, whose arrival, while unexpected could be the distraction the team  needed, and their own stealth technology, they might be able to actually sneak past all of the Invid planetary defenses after all.

"IFF pings positive for _Valivarre.  _She is assuming high planetary orbit and has just taken out two orbiting carrier ships.  She appears to be launching ground forces."

"Then we sneak in using them as cover.  They clear the way, and we sweep in and slip thru during the mass confusion," A new voice said from the entranceway.  Everyone except Derringer turned around to see that the Cyclone commander was back and was watching the ensuing battle out in the star lanes with a somewhat enigmatic look on his dark face, the sunglasses back in place over his eyes..

Janine heard Darmouth,  but chose not to answer the man just yet as she was still focusing on getting the people she was carrying to their destination in one piece.  As she and the other Horizont began to go into their re-entry burns, she notices that the Veritech escorts were beginning to fan out in an expanded diamond to give a more adequate field of protection.  Planetary re-entries were always amongst the most dangerous of all combat maneuvers because the transport ships pretty much had to stay on one set course and could not deviate from it the entire time that they were punching thru the atmosphere, which made them pretty much sitting ducks without even the benefit of being able to attempt evasive maneuvers.  The first mild rockings of Optera's gravity well vibrated thru the deck plates of the cockpit, and Janine knew that there was no turning back now.  With cool nerves, the transport commander eased herself into the re-entry corridor.

Brandon watched his wife settle her ship into position with what seemed to be practiced ease.  Both of the transports began their runs, and so far, everything was going according to plan.  However, the Zentraedi battle cruiser was an unexpected twist to this little operation, and it's presence had sure stirred up the hornet's nest in regards to the Invid defenders.  As long as it kept their attention away from him and his combat team however, he could care less.  While he harbored nothing personal against the giants, especially the ones that had joined the REF, he still was a bit glad that it was them that were engaging the Invid and not human warriors.  Despite their technologically inherently inferior equipment, they seemed to be able to dish out a lot more punishment to the Invid than any of the Sentinel member races were able to. As the fighter escort moved into their assigned postings, Baelanos observed one vibrantly colored REF Officer Pod rip thru a formation of Invid space scouts, go tumbling thru their heavier brethren, and then kamikaze itself against another troopship that had decided to join the fray and was just beginning to disgorge it's compliment of fresh Invid when it was consumed in an eerie Zero-gee fireball.  He continued to observe this maelstrom of death and destruction for a few moments more until his threat board began to ping incessantly for his attention.  He looked down and grimaced.  

'_So much for the damned cloaking devices.  I knew that they wouldn't watch us thru this mess,' _he thought as he began his weapons prep check-list.

"Heads up boys and girls.  Got a pack of stragglers that seem to want to sniff out our neck of the woods. Let's makes sure that they don't find the packages, shall we."

There was a chorus of affirmatives as the other fighters began to burn to intercept speed.  They knew that twenty four scout ships weren't going to be a major threat in and of themselves, but they could always call upon enough re-enforcements to actually be said threat.  That could not be allowed if this mission was going to succeed.  Baelanos locked on to the lead scout, and let loose a spread of short range high explosive missiles that seemed to cut the lead element to ribbons before they even knew that they were hit.  The remaining Invid craft seemed to paused, as if confused by the attack since they could detect no other Robotech mecha at the moment besides the Zentraedi off on the other side of the planet.  They did not have to be bewildered long however, as the rest of the Diamondbacks swooped in and made short work of them.

_'Whew, that was easy, almost too easy…but I guess we really shouldn't be pressing our luck and second-guessing all the little blessings that we are being given in this,'_ Brandon mused as the team regrouped after the turkey shoot.  They were still maintaining combat level communications at the moment, and although they had all splashed some bogeys, they really were too tense to bother with congratulating each other with kills.  Besides, this had only been the opening salvo.

"I got something on my scopes," Diamondback Two suddenly reported.  I have possible visuals, but the planet's EM-field is causing too much background interference for my scopes."  Lindsey's voice was devoid of emotion as she maneuvered her fighter to engage the new unknowns.

"Can you get a positive ID?"

"Umm, moving in to find out now."

"Got positive locks," Diamondback Five suddenly came on and thru the tac-net.  It seemed that Spencer was not exactly happy with the revelation, or else something else was bothering her. "Armored scouts with booster packs  coming out of the atmosphere. They are making a beeline for the transports.  Seems ETA is 45 seconds." '_Why in the hell would they be anything else?  We ARE over their Homeworld after all, _' Angie thought with a bit of venom as she tried to lock onto another one of the armored slugs.  It took a long twelve seconds for the IFF to finally lock onto the target, and in Angie's mind that was about eleven seconds too long.  She let loose a quad of missiles and smiled darkly as the contrails ran home on her selected victim and the spreading explosion caught the target Invid's two closest wingmen in his death blossom.  Taking only a second to tally up her fresh kills, Spencer then went after her next prey.

Merlin continued to monitor the ongoing fight from the slightly more armored BETA section of his LEGIOS.  With his better half handling most of the chasing down and hunting down aspects of this dogfight, Steven was able to focus on the tactics that the Invid were employing for this, because they were supposed to be invisible to the slugs sensors after all, but somehow they had been able to pinpoint their location anyways.  The Invid so far seemed to only be homing in on the pair of Horizonts who were currently cutting thru the ionosphere, even though most of them were getting swatted out of the air by the veritechs before they could get close enough to actually inflict any serious damage, yet.

_'Just how are they homing in on us, they can't detect our power supplies anymore, and the stealth shielding is supposed to include our radars and comm arrays as well, so what gives?,' _ he thought as he felt himself getting righted in his seat once more as Lindsay came out of a tight spiral.  He glanced at his monitors on the ships breaking orbit and then it hit him. '_No wonder they are tracking those two crates like homing pigeons.  The burn-off is causing them to glow like micro-stars, and of course the Invid are going to investigate something like that.  That was how they were able to take out the original testing team as well.  It wasn't the stealth gear that failed them, it was the planet itself!'_

"Captain!," The male Niequiest shouted into the tac-net.  "They can pick them up by their heat signatures. The Invid are following their heat signatures as they are burning off in the atmosphere!"

Derringer came out and under the expanding debris cloud from the last command pincer and made a beeline for the Horizonts…..and his wife.  So that was how they were finding them, and there really wasn't any way to stop them from homing in and eventually scoring with that tactic either, unless the fighters went to ground with the transports to give them a literal body shield.  The fighters would probably get mauled in the process, but that was what they there for, after all.

"All units close in on the Horizonts.  Defend them by any means necessary. Once you get into the ionosphere, things will get a bit choppy, so keep with the Horizonts and watch your backs," he stated even as he slid in along the starboard bow of Janine's Horizont..  The rest of the escort squadron split itself off by the numbers and followed Derringer's lead even as the third wave of Invid combatants rose from the surface to engage them.

This the veritechs once more began to repel the Invid, but this time there were two added problems.  First, they were traveling thru the atmosphere on re-entry, so maneuverability was shot to about nil, and second, the Invid had decided to pick up a new tactic this go-round. While still shooting erratically at the Horizonts, and now the VFs as well as they became somewhat visible thanks to the atmospheric effects they were going thru, the scout ships and pincers had decided that kamikaze runs might work more effectively than plasma bursts.  While this tactic had been done before, it as not exactly what the diamondbacks or the transport crews were expecting, at least not until the first suicidal impact.

Diamondback 7 started to wobble and the Beta component began to smoke horribly after a Scout raked across it with it's pincers.  It wasn't quite knocked out of it's trajectory, but it began to pull back and away from Lightning Bolt 2.  Sensing an opening, a trio of scout ships accelerated to flanking speed, barreling thru the defenders and taking full advantage of the gap that the limping veritech had made.  Angelina and Johnny tried to make up the slack by throwing out a withering sheet of pulsated energy at the incoming fighters, but somehow despite their best efforts, one of the dogged little buggers was still able to get thru and slammed into the Horizont just aft of amidships.  The ship rocked as a shower of debris came billowing out from it's undercarriage.  It was a miracle that the ship held together after the impact.

Brandon paled upon seeing the Invid actually break thru and inflict that kind of damage, even if it was from a kamikaze attack.  Fortunately, they had all come out of the most perilous part of the re-entry process, and could now maneuver somewhat against the next wave of fighters, but how they were going to do it and keep themselves from losing anyone else when half of what they were defending was already falling to pieces and was beginning to go into what looked like a full acceleration burn.

"All units, separate and engage new intruders! Protect those transports!"

The smaller, yet nimbler Alphas broke away almost as one from their larger BETA components and dove into the rising squadrons of Shock Troopers with a renewed frenzy. Merlin and Primrose dove straight into their formations and there were already a dozen blossoming explosions before they even realized that the humans were among them.  Most of the Diamondbacks followed their element leaders leads and cut their own bloody swathes thru the enemy lines in scant seconds.  The more massive and heavier armed Betas then came in following the Horizonts thru the gap created by the Alphas, vaporizing another two dozen Invid war machines in the process. The stragglers tried to fight back, and were successful in finally destroying the limping Diamondback Seven Beta in a three viciously manic way crossfire, even if he did take the trio out in the process.  However, against the superior firepower of their somewhat invisible foes, the Shock Troopers did not stand much of a chance.

"Thank you for the assist, Diamondbacks, we are beginning our drops now, " the cool, melodious voice of Lightning Bolt lead's CO came over the net.  The drop from upper atmosphere to lower atmosphere went pretty quick with all the ships dropping like rocks and going in at full burn.  The lead Horizont landed perfectly, dropping off it's bunkers and then using them as fortifications that it could land behind as it landed itself.   

The second Horizont began to mimic it's flight leader and had just dropped it's first bunker when about a dozen more shock troopers suddenly exploded out of the ground and leapt straight into the air and launched themselves at the already stricken starship before any of it's crew or defenders had a chance to react.  The purple colored carapaced monstrosities swarmed about the Horizont and began to systematically tear it to pieces in mid-air.  The attached bunker suddenly fell to earth, part of the wing still attached, and then seconds later the whole transport just blew up with the Invid still trying their hardest to rip more chunks of it's guts out as it blew.   The ground pounders were just pouring out of the settled bunkers as this was happening and were met with a shower of fragments of what was once one of their ships.

"Oh crap, we're stuck here now," one cyclone jockey muttered with a wide-eyed expression as his squad watched what was left of Lightning bolt 2 come crashing down to earth in a fireball of twisted metal and burning reactants.

"Well, I guess that means we give the Regent that much more of a repair bill, doesn't it, trooper?," retorted one of the heavy weapons equipped power armor troopers with the name "Fitzgerald" emblazoned on his name plate.

"Ahh, Yessir, Sergeant." The younger man stammered, collecting his Gallant and helping the rest of his squad set up a perimeter even while looking in three directions at once for the next onslaught.

*******

Back in the air, the VTs were exacting a deadly vengeance for their fallen comrades.  The hunter-killer type Alpha and Beta teams were hunting down any and all Invid vessels within a few miles of the landing zone with complete success.  Captain Derringer had basically given blanket discretion for targets, and it was open season on all Invid.  The pilots of the Diamondbacks made it a point to follow that particular order to the letter.

Primrose found herself separated from the rest of the squadron and even her wingmate after she had chased down and knocked out of  the sky a pair of extremely elusive armored scouts.  Getting her bearings, she suddenly took in the site of another battle taking place below her that caught her attention.  Below her, there was a pitched battle going on between numerous hard pressed Invid, including an inordinate number of  Royal Enforcers were fighting tooth and nail with an equal number of  REF re-fitted full sized Zentraedi, most of them proudly sporting both the REF Diamonds and the sigils of Lord Breetai's personal command.  After a moment, she thought that she could make out Lord Breetai himself in his command power armor, ripping thru first one team, then another of Royal Enforcers, seemingly intent on making his way to one larger than normal Invid Power suit, which rushed forward to meet the Zentraedi legend head-on in a battle of metal-clad titans.  She watched the fight to the death between the two great warriors play out, little more than an observer when Breetai finally launched the both of them high above the other combatants as his finale act of defiance to the creature known as the Invid Regent.  She then saw the look of peace on Breetai's face and horror etched into the Invid as it started to struggle during those final moments.

Then the world exploded.

At least their little corner of it did at any rate.  It took Angelina Spencer a full ten seconds to blink the spots out of her eyes, and then all she saw was rain of debris from the two ill-fated combatants raining down upon their soldiers below.  All fighting had seemed to stop for the moment as both the giants and the slug-like aliens realized that both of their great leaders had just perished in that inferno.  The Zentraedi survivors were the first to recover their senses, and unleashed their unified grief upon the still stunned Invid.  A score of them simply disappeared under the concentrated barrage of hellfire unleashed by the Zentraedi, and close to three times that number crumpled to the ground, exploding on impact or mortally wounded and unable to continue the fight.  The barrage continued, but in clusters the Invid began to fight back, and re-enforcements were already on the way.  The Zentraedi continued their _Kaba-Brek _death chant even as more of their dwindling number began to fall to plasma blasts and pincer strikes.  Finally, one of the female command officers finally was able to re-gain control over her troops and began to order a fall back to the drop ships.  Angie recorded the entire episode, knowing that command would most definitely want to know what had befallen one of their heroes.

Karianna Hesh had tears of grief streaming down her face as she led the hundred odd troops that were still able to fight back to their transports.  They had been able to break the back of the Invid warhost, but at such a high price.  She needed to be strong for her soldiers, but she wanted nothing more than to die here and now with her Commander, and her lover.  She almost got that wish when a trio of Armored scouts came down and strafed her column of troops, blowing one arm off of her Officer's Pod and toppling her over.  She watched them swoop around like a trio of hawks lining up an evening meal, when suddenly the center one exploded into metallic confetti.  It's right hand wingmate followed suit a moment later as a beam of coherent energy bore thru it and materialized before continuing on out of it's sensor suite.  The third one began to evade but got no further than the beginning of it's barrel roll before it met the same fate as it's wingmates courtesy of a high explosive missile.

Karianna looked up just as what appeared to be a black and gray REF alpha fighter streaked by overhead at a high rate of speed.  She knew that her people didn't have any of those in their current arsenal, or else they would have been deployed here.  She saw the rose symbol thru the Terran Reptile symbol embossed on the tailfin and made note to thank that particular pilot some day, should they both survive this.  She then got the rest of her people on board the troopships and prepared to lift off.  They needed to fulfill one of Breetai's last orders and find Admirals Hunter.

Angie smiled tightly as she watched the second troopship lift off and climb for orbit with few Invid pursuers.  She knew that she had over-extended her time in the combat zone, but she also knew in her heart that she had to help her allies escape. 

_'At least someone was going to be able to get out of this hellhole to tell them what happened here,'_ the woman thought as she pushed for more speed to get her back to her own unit and report to what exactly it was that the giant warriors turned miners turned warriors had been up to…..as well as what they had accomplished and at what price.  That was when she noticed the pinging on her threat board and she came back into full focus of what was going on around her.  Somehow a squadron of Invid fighters had been able to detect her and were now coming in for the kill.  She was still too far out from the rest of the combat team and her chances of making it to them before the Invid overtook her were slim to none, and as she glanced at the IFF, she felt her heart sink a bit as her chances slid a bit further in the nil category.

Counting down the seconds until they were in range and were upon her, Angie suddenly realized that for all of his faults, there was at least one thing that Ryan had been able to teach her that should hopefully come in handy in this situation and might actually allow her to survive this: _Allow you opponents to assume that they have the upper hand and continue to allow them to assume this even as you exploit any AND all momentary weaknesses that they will eventually exhibit._  She was about halfway back to base camp when the first plasma discs came whizzing by her canopy, quickly followed by the lead pair of BOOSTER equipped armored scouts, both of whom had just missed making nice swipes at her with their diamond tipped forearm claws.  Angie quickly drops two heat seekers on the right-hand one more out of instinct than anything else, and is already corkscrewing, clawing for altitude before the missiles run home, knocking out the first of her attackers.  Switching to Guardian mode, while still spinning she trap shoots another of her attackers straight out the air as it zips right past her, and she follows up by fly-trapping it's partner after it gouges the left arm deeply with it's own claw.

Feeling the inertia from the erratic moves pushing her deeper into her grav-chair and G-Force threshold, Spencer let the spin ride it's course until she was upside-down, and then made a run for ground, dropping another quad of missiles directly on top of the one scout that decided he wanted to try to come up under her to catch her un-awares.  Flying thru the debris cloud nearly cost the fire haired VT pilot her life.  Two more scouts came zipping up after her, assuming that she has still climbing for orbit instead of diving, and the trio nearly slammed headfirst into each other.   Only her own finely honed instincts saved her from smashing completely into them. As it was, she bounced hard enough off of one of two crab colored ships that she felt blood tingling in her mouth, and felt the ship shudder even as she unloaded a long burst that disintegrated it's partner even as they broke contact.

_'Comon, hold it together for me, just a little bit longer.'_ She coaxed her machine as the diagnostics systems began to go red across the board.  _'Just how many of those little bloody buggers did I pop off, anyhow?,'_ went thru her mind as she thru the protesting alpha back into fighter mode and continued once more to try and close the gap between her and the rest of her party.  She could see friendlies at the furthest range of her targeting computer and hoped that that also meant that they were within transceiver range as well.  Unfortunately, in spite of her best efforts, she still hadn't equated out the odds in her favor.

"Diamondback Nickel alpha to home plate, please respond.  Am under heavy fire and may not make it back to score.  Diamondback nickel alpha, requesting assistance, looking at imminent splashdown in hostile territory and am requesting any assistance possible. Repeat, this is Diamon…Agghh..!!"  Angelina screamed into the comm array as another set of plasma burst were aimed her way, and this set finding it's way home, splashing across the nosecone and forward fuselage of her fighter, causing a few of her cockpit systems to blow-out, spark flashing her in the process, including the comm array from the looks of it.  Primrose then returned fire, her GU-XX autocannon spewing out a rain of death that enveloped the hapless Invid and his wingmate as well.

"Great," she muttered as she made note of the new damage her poor fighter was taking. "Now the comm's out, and my targeting computers fried, I got minimal avionics and my port thrusters is all but shot.  And I still got at least three more of these ugly buggers on my tail as well."  She angrily toggled over her joystick and set the missiles for a full spread.  She then turned back to give a little payback to her tormentors.

The last flight of scoutships had double backed and were now preparing to finish off their quarry.  The formation leader had already watched these spawn of the Robotech Masters destroy too many of his hive mates.  He could already taste the sweet victory that ending this one's existence would bring. It would not bring their beloved Regent, their All-Father, but they would have their vengeance.  He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts of victory that he failed to realize the earth mecha had turned back around to face him once more until the cursed ship had already launched it's deadly array of ballistics weaponry at them.  The Invid formation fell apart as the high explosive missiles fell amongst them and cut them to ribbons.  The of the scouts blew up instantly as their armored systems were simply overwhelmed by the amount of devastation being sent at them.  Another just simply ceased to be as a fair number of missiles swept over him. Number four tried to veer away, and he almost made it. Almost.  He had pulled out a few seconds too late and the missiles had already locked onto him, and pulling up and into them only gave them a more oblique target profile to slam into.  The junior scouts screams were still in the formation leader's mind as he let the fury wash over him and he pushed his own fatally crippled mecha forward at the psychotic human.

Angelina thought that she took out the entire formation by expending her entire missile payload in that one surge of power.  Seeing one come out of the fratricide cloud  hell-bent on ramming her was not what she was expecting, and she barely had time to do much more than swerve her craft just enough for the impact not to be head on.  The ship finally gave in to the inevitable and just died, and thus began to drop like a rock, spinning like an erratic shuriken towards the ground.  Spencer tried her best to fight back the threshold gray out as the gee-forces on her body increased geometrically. She barely had time to check her ejection seat and find that it was indeed inoperable before the ground rushed up at her, and she slammed her head against the canopy hard enough to blissfully allow the darkness to overtake her.

******

Merlin punched his ship into full burn, knowing that Whetstone was not that far behind him.  They had picked up a scrambled distress call a few moments ago while on patrol, and it was relieving to hear that Primrose's luck had held out once more, it seemed that that celebration may have been short lived indeed.  They had just made it to the area where the last fateful distress signal had been sent, and all they could find was a debris field, most of it from the charred remains of Invid mecha.

'At least she made them pay a very high cost to bring her down. I always knew that she was good, but even she didn't deserve to go out like this.'

He switched on the mike, all joviality gone from his voice as he turned his Beta back towards the base camp.

"No sign of her Captain.  It looks like from all intents and purposes she gave a lot better than she got though, if it is any consolation.  Unfortunately, we aren't picking up anything so I have no idea what happened. Requesting permission to return to base camp."

"Yeah, permission granted Lieutenant. Bring them on in."  Brandon closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he heard the communications sever on the other end of the mike.  It took him a few moments for him to remember to shut his own end down.  He sighed and turned around at the sound of approaching armored boots clanking on the deck plates.

"Is there something that I can help you with, Major Darmouth?"

"Well, I was coming to give you a status report on available assets after losing Harrington and his crew, but it seems like you are having to deal with some new losses."

"You could say that.  One of my  pilots went down, but we couldn't find anything of her bird when we sent out a patrol to search over the area of her last transmission."

_'A Her?.. Nah, now way….I would have been told if she was assigned to this,'_  So I guess with this lost pilot, we are down to seven LEGIOS, one Horizont, 7 operation destroids at the moment with a slim chance of getting two more up and running.  We also got  19 injured men from my unit, and at least one of your pilots."  The dark man removes his shades and ball cap, rubs his temples, then looks over to the senior officer. "So what are you going to do about your missing pilot, you going to send a team out to at least attempt to recover the body, or at least her flight recorder?"

"If we could figure OUT just what happened to her, sure.  The problem is, it's like Lieutenant Spencer simply fell off the face of the planet.  We can't pick up a transceiver, IFF, or anything from her boat, and without those, we just don't have the ability to even know where to begin searc…."  Brandon stopped upon seeing the suddenly ashen look on Ryan's face. "Something wrong, Major?  Major?….. Darmouth!"

"Hmm….oh Yessir." Ryan visibly shakes himself back to the present. "Lieutenant Spencer, you said. Umm, this wasn't by chance Lieutenant Angelina Spencer, was it?"

"Actually yes it was….hey wait a minute!!  Where the hell are you going?"

Ryan didn't answer the veritech pilot, as he was already running full tilt back to the main hatchway, pushing aside a pair of cyclone riders as he leapt out of the command ship and made a beeline towards the mech area, a feeling of death warmed over coming off of him in waves.

******

 A/N: And thus ends another episode of this weird rancor-roll type rant.  I had to pay homage to the Jack McKinney books here and pull a bit out of the Sentinels Book 5: Rubicon.  I remember how I felt the first time I read that battle and how Breetai basically ended it by sacrificing himself to kill the Invid Regent.

I apologize for the long delay between this chapter and the last one, as a few things have kept me from being diligent with my postings until now.  Gomen Nesai.

Well until next time……..

Roll * Macross closing credits*


	6. Chapter 05: Going to Ground

Robotech: Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Five: Going to Ground

By SithKnight-Galen

SK-G: Well, seeing how they got to the planet last episode, I guess I should go ahead and see where our intrepid crew will go from there. After all, it is my job to cause conflict the best manner possible for my cast of characters.

A/N2: I apologize for the lengthy delay. It seems that the real world can get to event he best of us. And this leads to point numbert hree, because, honestly, I would not mind having a Valkyrie more often than not, especially during rush hour traffic.

A/N3: No, I do not own Macross, Robotech, MOSPEADA or any of the people, events or equipment from it, because if I did, I would be sitting on the kickbacks from this instead of walking a beat everyday. Being able to mooch like that would be pretty nice. Besides, every funding source to help my campaign for global domination cannot be a bad thing...REALLY. Also, feel free to send Reviews, flames, or just asides about life in general. Even agents of the Dark Side do get curious as to how they are doing sometimes.

A/N4: I would like to thank my reivewers so far, they are what keep me going, and I do take your words to heart as I write this and any future endeavors.

**Shinto Red**: Thank you for reviewing. I thank you for your honesty and dedication.

**YaoiYaoiYeah**: I am glad to hear that you are enjoying the action. I am trying to maintain a balance in all aspects of this story...Angst, humour, drama, romance, and of course, giant mecha kicking tail!

**GPPR**: Actually you were right, her name is Kazianna Hesh. I was re-reading my Sentinals and End of the Circle just to make sure that I was getting the feel for things just right and saw my error after you pointed it out. Thanks.

Now on with the Story.. Enter Macross Theme

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Ryan stomped past the sentries and the flight support crew that were re-arming the VTs without a word, making a beeline for his Alpha fighter. The troops did not think nothing of it until the REF Army Major failed to acknowledge the hail from the officer on duty. The look on the senior officer's face was enough to give the young woman pause however, and by the time she had gotten her bearings once more, he was alreayd past her. Second Lieutenant Sylvia Voorhees then turned just in time to see Captain Derringer and two armored Cyclone operatives giving Major Darmouth chase, the two enlisted men just as confused as she was, but following nonetheless. The Major, however, just seemed to ignore them as if they were some form of annoying insect that would eventually get bored with him and go on their merry way. Besides, he had more important things to worry about.

Darmouth made it about two-thrids of the way to the parked Alpha fighters when he paused, hearing the sounds of protoculture enhanced jet turbines coming in and a pair of blue-grey Betas returning from a sortie. Ryan did not wait for them to do much more than land before he was already climbing the just extended ladder to the cockpit intent on interrogating the pilot.

"Where did she go down?" He half yelled at the pilot even as the cockpit blister was still lowering to bring the young man down to the Cyclone jockey's level. "Tell me, where is she?!?"

Johnny took in the man's name and rank very quickly and astutely, deciding to answer the man's questions. besides, the look on the darker man's face was a bit un-settling, although this was not anything like the what he had heard about the infamous "_Nighthunter_."

"Well, Major, we were not able to find her, exactly, but we got the co-ordinates for where her bird went down, and from the looks of things, it was a mess, but there might be a chance that Angie...er Lieutenant Spencer may still be alive out there."

"So why in the hell did you NOT bring her back in Ensign," Ryan retorted, the venom evident in his low voice even as his eyes narrowed. "She is your wingmate and you left her out there for the Invid to do what they will with her."

'_What the hell is his problem? It's not as if they were lovers or anything...Angie isn't seeing anyone, and espeically not some psycho jar-head like this guy..'. _Whetstone put an edge into his own voice as he answered back to the senior officer. "Look sir, our orders were to see what we could find out there, but not to put ourselves into any extra danger than we had to, because three downed pilots would have jeapordized the mission far mo.."

"Screw the mission parameters! You should have brought her back one way or the other!," Darmouth yelled, cutting the pilot off and startling even derringer who was coming up behind the duo. Just give me the damned co-ordinates and I'll bring her back myself." Ryan then added quietly to himself, '_Or die trying, I owe you that much.'_

"Sir, I can't allow you to do that. The flight...HEY! What do you think you are doing?!?" Johnny tried to grab the flight recorder CD back from the Major, but he was too quick and had already leaped back down the ladder. The Beta pilot scrambled out of his restraints in hot pursuit when he noticed that Captain Derringer had gotten in the Army officer's path. Whetstone was pretty confident that Darmouth would give up under that kind of pressure. So did Derringer.

"Major, stand down. You clearly are not thinking straight right now." Brandon Derringer hated to go into command mode,m but now seemed to be one of those times were it seemed to be the only option that might snap this guy out of whatever had set him off. If not, that was what the two armored marines were behind him for. Hopefully. '_What is up with this guy? I was told that he was one of the smoothest operators in the fleet, but he is now going nuts over one of MY pilots going down, but he doesn't even bat an eye about over three dozen casualties from just the landing. And Angelina isn't related to Ryan as far as I know, so that can't be the reason why he is going nuts. At any rate, I need to put an end to this now, or else this whole mission is in the proverbial crapper.' _

"Captain, I need to go get her, and I am taking one of the birds to go and do it. You can bring me up on charges when I return."

"Darmouth, I am not asking you. You are going with these men, and when you are relieved of duty until you are able to take command once more with some sense of reasonable decorum."

Ryan narrowed his eyes at his naval counterpart, but didn't say anything as he stepped forward to be taken away by the two Cyclone Armor clad officers. He quietly raised his hands waiting for the two officers to slap him in irons. The two junior enlisted ratings looked at each other un-easily, then hesitantly stepped forward to grab Darmouth when he sprung into action. Before anyone could react, Ryan punched Staff Sergeant Diaz, the rightside Cyclone jockey in the face, not quite breaking the nose, but making it bleed profusely nonetheless. Then with blurring speed, the veteran military specialist then tossed the other Cyclone rider, armor and all over his shoulder and into Derringer. Even as the grunt is in still in the air, Ryan whirls upon Whetstone, who had just arrived into the conflagaration, and knocked him backwards with a vicious roundhouse kick. Seeing his chance to break away, Darmouth then sprinted to one of the Alphas which were in guardian mode, and prepped for rapid VTOL launching.

Jumping into the veritech and snapping down the canopy in one deft motion, Ryan ignored the flight crew and the officers down below as he patched in his helmet/thinking cap into the Alpha's systems. Letting the familiar tingle of the machine reading his neural pathways and getting in synch with him wash over him like a light drizzle, the determined man completed the pre-flight in record time. Turning the leg thrusters on full, Ryan then lifted the machine up into the air, converted it into jet mode and took off at maximum burn after Angelina Spencer's last location.

Brandon had to shield himself from the backwash and blown about sand from the clearly insane man's departure. He, as well as most of the others present, watched the retreating fighter quickly become a speck in the sky with his eyes narrowed and his mouth compressed into a tight line.

"If he returns alive, I do beleive that I am going to kill him," Derringer muttered just loud enough that Whetstone and Diaz both turned to look at him. In a slightly louder voice so that he could be heard, he then stated, "Get someone up in the air and after him! I do not need two destroyed Alphas!"

The two others scrambled to get their people moving to comply with Derringer's orders when Voorhees then came up to the Frazzled CO. Her french braid was still done, but looked like it was just barely. She was decked out in the standard REF CVR-3 combat suit, except her purple helmet was crooked under her left arm, and she had a clipboard with a flimsy report in the other hand.

"Captain Derringer?"

"Yes, what is it?," Brandon replied shortly, his patience already sorely tested.

"You might want to read this, sir. It seems that what is left of Breetai's combat force is pulling off of the surface and is conducting a fighting ..tactical withdrawal back to the _Valivarre._" The younger officer handed here superior the clipboard, and then continued with her report. "It seems that preliminary reports, Commander Breetai has been slain in combat, but that he killed the True Invid Regent in the process."

"What did you just say? Commander Breetai...And the Invid Regent? _BOTH _of them dead?" Brandon snatche dthe report from the destroid pilot's hands and his eyes scanned over the flimsy very quickly, his face paling slightly the further that he had read. This contingency was defintely NOT discussed during the mission breifings. Then he read what the resident intel officer had thought was now going on. That mad ehim pause and blanch completely.

"What's wrong, Captain?," Sylvia asked, a slightly concerned look on her face.

"Get the men in position, Lieutenant, and expect heavy company very shortly." Derringer began stomping back to the Horizont, his stride determined. "Make sure that all weapons and people are decked out in full battle rattle and ready to go. We may end up having to fight some very angry hornets very shortly." With that, the mission commander re-entered the command pod and disappeared from sight before the fighter or Destroid commanders could ask anything else.

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Major Ryan Darmouth was on the most important mission in his life, and he happened to survive this and get both him and Angelina back, it would in all likely-hood be the last mission of his life as well. Dis-obeying at least one direct order and then out and out stealing a top of the line combat multi-role veritech fighter, even if that fighter had been assigned to you, was a courtmartial, and probably, executable offense in at least three intergalactic militaries that he knew of, and in all probability, in most of the others that he wasn't aware of. Trying to focus on the present instead of the past or the present for the moment, Ryan went back over the mental image he had taken of the of the search zone that that pilot, yes Whetstone was his name, had made during his last fly-by.

'_That idiot should've gone down with her! What the hell kind of outfit is Derringer running nayways, letting his pilots go off without proper cover in the middle of firefights. Some wingman he was! Was probably back at base knocking back smoothies while everyone else was actually earning their paychecks. If she's hurt, he better pray to whatever Gods are smiling down on his sorry ass that I do not make it back.....'_

Darmouth considered continuing that particular line of thought but he noticed something else that caught his attention, bringing his focus and tightly controlled fury onto a new target, or rather, set of targets. Keying the HOTAs, Ryan pivoted his powerful bird down and began to priortize his new victims. Smiling darkly as the recticule in his HUDs targetting display went from opaque to crimson, the sacaren man pressed the thumbpad of his right joystick and then watched a quartet of missles shoot out from his under-carriage hungerily tearing thru the air towards their intended targets.

The formation of five armored scouts on fly-by patrol were intent on finding any of their despised giant advesaries and sending them to the next life. They had alreayd run into a small group of their battle mecha and were in the process of ripping them apart when that strange combat machine that couldn't be detected on their radars seemed to disrupt their perfectly executed ambush. The invid were eventually able to vansquish this interloper as well, but not before their most hated foe had time to re-group and retreat back to their ships. and worse yet, that single machine had killed almost two dozen of their brethren before it was felled to a similar fate. They had new orders from the central hive overmind to find that annoying intruder, or what was left of it, and to bring it back to the science caste to have it examined in more detail. The quintet was just completing one pass of the battlezone and were swerving around to begin another one when number two and five both seemed to explode without warning.

Ryan dove towards what remained of the formation as the survivors scurried to the four winds, trying to get some room from whatever had just dropped two of their flight. Number three was not even an afterthought as two more plasma missiles were dropped on him as Darmouth completed an inverted corkscrew past the poor scout. Reconfiguring to Guardian mode with but a thought and the pressing of a few levers, the combat pilot then brought his gun into play, coring the remaining wingman with a precise, tightly controlled short burst from his right-hand GU-XX autocannon. He then turned his attention to the flight leader, or what he assumed to be the flight leader, only to find the armored scout gone from his vision.

'_Now where in the hell did that little bugger go off to....'_ "AGGGHHGGG!" Ryan exclaimed he quickly pulled his Alpha back and away from the angry stream of annihilation discs that were winging their way to his position. this was definitely not a position that he liked being in, but at least he could work with it.

"Ah, well at least I now know where you are, my little friend," Darmouth muttered under his breath as he right himself and tried to manually follow the sneaky little Invid as it tucked and rolled underneath and behind him. "You can't outrun me that easily."

The two mecha pivoted and rolled in an intense dance, each trying to gain the upper hand as they traded annihilation discs and long-bore autocannon rounds, neither of the two scoring a definite hit, although both leaving telling scores on their opponent. Darmouth was feeling the beads of sweat on his forehead as he pushed the enevelope in the Alpha as he corkscrewed through another long chain of deadly plasma bolts. Then he saw his chance.

'_This alien is good.....too bad I am better,'_ he thought as he saw the killspot in his mind's eye even as it was lining up in his sights and he squeezed the trigger with a definite pull of his gun hand. The man then released a faint superior smile as the last Invid fell to the earth below, a single shot through it's delicate and usually obsucre sensor eye.

'_That was not fun....and may have cost me more time than I really could have affored. Please, Angie, be alright...I'm coming and nothing here or on Heaven or in Hell will stop me!' _

Finally spotting the rough landing area that Diamondback Five primary had created during her crash. With a flick of his off hand he turned on the Tac-Freq.

"This is Ironwalker Headhunter Lambda One Seven to base. Have reached co-ordinates of downed birdie and it appears that there may have been a walker. Going down to invesitgate."

"Wait, Major Darmouth, Major, think about wh...wait did you say there was a possibilty of a survivor down there?," Commander Janine Derringer's voice piped thru the line and into Darmouth's helmet.

"That is correct, Home base,. Am transmitting co-ordinates and then will touch back in when I can make confirmation one way or the other, Ironwalker Lambda one seven out."

"Wait, Major Dar.....," Janine tried to call the rogue officer one more time, but got only dead air thru the mike as information wa salreayd coming out of the tactical terminal next to the comm array. ."Dammit, that man had better be right."

She then turned to her husband and the CVR-3 clad man with him. The other man looked like all of the other Army types, except he had more kindly features on his youthful looking asiatic face, and the Medical symbol on his right shoulder set her a bit more at ease.

"What did you find out? Did Ryan..I mean, Major Darmouth find her?," the other man asked. As Janine looked closer, she saw the name Zhao, A. on his right breastplate. Zhao seemed to have something of an anxious expression on his face. Janine glanced at her husband, who was studying the co-ordinates, before she answered.

"Well, he didn't say anything definite, Doctor, but he thinks that there is a chance that Lieutenant Spencer may still be alive. he was setting down and was going to continue to search on foot."

Brandon straightened up and looked at his wife, but before he could say anything, Zhao spoke up again.

"Captain, with your permission, can I go with Ensign Whetstone to bring them back in?"

Captain Derringer mulled it for a moment, knowing that every moment and man that was waste don this could mean the success or failure of this mission, but he also knew that Ryan had a point about not leaving ANYONE behind either. Finally making a decision in his mind, and hopefully quelling that little voice nagging at his conscience, he nodded, but added quietly, "Yes, but take one of the Cyclone Riders with you."

"Yessir." Zhao whipped off a quick salute, and then turned and ran back out the command center, calling in for one of the Ground pounders to meet him at Whetstone's Beta. After the door closed, Janine turned to look at her husband. The last three hours since this mission had begun had seemed to age him five years. She watched quietly as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut to releive some tension. Janine then got up anc came behind her husband, and began kneeding his neck just above where the armor ended.

"So, what is going on now, and what is going to happen when they get back?"

Brandon paused for a moment before he answered, as he had to bring his mind back to the present, as he momentarily shut it off at his wife's caress. He kept his pose though, just so he could enjoy the private moment that he knew was about to end all too soon.

"I don't know. I guess it is all going to depend on what Darmouth finds out there. His conviction was in the right place, but he did also desert his post and dis-obey a direct order. I reviewed his records, and there was never a mention of him doing this in his entire career. I don't know why he flipped about Angie being shot down....he wasn't even that affect by his own people being injured and killed."

"Maybe there's more to it than we know."

"Maybe."

"Well,' Janine murmured lowly as she continued to massage out the tense muscles at the base of her husband's skull. "All we can do now is pray for the best. With any luck, Darmouth might actually be able to find Spencer and they both may make it back safe."

"I sure hope so, because we are going to need every able body and soon."

At that moment, the command lounge's door slid open and Lieutenant Cyndi Mallard, Janine's co-pilot came crashing in, her brown eyes as wide as saucers. The couple quickly seperated at the appearance of the junior officer.

"Captain Derringer, sir, The forward scouts reports an Invid troop formation coming this way. They don't appear to be aware of us yet, but that could change very quickly!"

Lieutenant junior grade Angelina Victoria "Primrose" Spencer had encountered alot in her time in the REF, inckuding having two fighters shot out from under her, but this was definitely something that she was going to have to chalk up to luck to being the only thing that was keeping her alive this time. The blood seeping down her bangs from the nasty gash to the side of her head only the most visible of the wounds she had sustained when she plowed her ruined fighter into the ground. But at least she was alive, or at least that is what she kept telling herself after she came to.

'_Any crash you survive and all that jive....guess I am living proof of that....at least until the slugs find me, if even they don't think I am dead.'_ Angie thought bitterly as she limped into the cave opening that she had been slwoly trudging to for the last twenty minutes. She knew that staying out in the open would have made it easier for her teammates to find her, but it also would have made it easier for the enemy to catch her as well, and that was something she was not that keen on just yet. It didn't help matters that her MOSPEADA armor had also bought it in the crash or she might not have felt quite so naked in the open. Her flight armor was still intact, mostly, if one could discount the gashes in the abdomen and leg, as well as the spiderweb fractures currently composing the right side of her helmet's visor.

_'This is just great! Why the hell did I agree to go on this mission anyways? I am going to die on some god-forsaken rock by a bunch o fovergrown slugs in power armor. Why me?' _Angie glowered as she looked back once more at the skyline from the cave entrance. She had activated her emergancy rescue beacon, but was not really counting on it saving her this time, as she hadn't seen a single one of her people yet, and it had been over five hours now, if her chornometer was still reading right. She limped a bit deeper into the cavern before her injuries and fatigue overtook her once more, and she slid down against one of the walls, her head feeling suddenly light again. She was hoping that the air her was hospitable, but after the stuff that occured when REFer's inhaled Garuda's hallucinagenic air, and then dealing with the mess on Peryton, she really didn't want to push her quirkly luck anymore.

'_Maybe just a little rest won't hurt...I can keep moving in a minute....'_ she thought as she closed her green flecked brown eyes.

Spencer woke up with shock and a feeling of vertigo a few moments later, the faint ovice of the man who was once the love of her life and more recently the bane of her existance in the back of her mind. She pushed the man's voice out of her mind as she tried to scramble painfully to her feet. She got about half-way there when she heard the first click and paused in mid-action. Looking up, Angie then realized she was staring down the barrel of an Invid Enforcer. Three more red-encased Invid were standing just a bit back. Angie thought to lower hand towards her Gallant still on her hip, but stopped that action as the Invid's gun began tracking her moverment, and there seemed to be something akin to a smirk playing on the thing's mouth.

"You..human are coming with us." It spoke after a moment."

-------

And there ya go....after so long, another chapter down.

Glad to see how releasing writing can be after such a long break, espeically now that I am a free man myself again. Ending a relationship is never easy, but one does have to realize that life does go on, and you have to find yourself in order not to lose yourself. Well, until next time :)

roll Macross ending music


	7. Chapter 06: Into the Pits of Hell

Robotech: Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Six: Into the Pits of Hell

By SithKnight-Galen

SK-G: Ahh, and now the action heats up, and how. Let's just see if I can get this chapter out on something akin to a timely basis. It is something that quite a few people like for me to work on on a regular basis: My daughter, my bosses, my roomies, my poor mechwarrior opponents, my readers, my Bishopric, the list just goes on and on, and I am afraid I don't quite have enough blaster bolts on hand. maybe I should just re-invest all my time and energy I invest in the Dark side into cloning myself instead........

A/N2: Of course I do not own Macross, Robotech, MOSPEADA or any of the people, events or equipment from it, because if I did, I would be merrily running thru the town in my own Glaug Officer's Pod playing kick the Lexus with the greatest of ease and a very pleased grin on my face.

Okay, enough of my prattle. Let's get on with the Story..

Enter Macross Theme

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First Sergeant Antonio Knupf felt hot despite the best attempts of his VR-052's air recirculation systems attempts to keep him cool. It added to his irritation about the situation that he was currently in, but on the good side, being irritable and uncomfortable sure kept him alert. He couldn't believe that he had agreed to go along on this hair brained mission into the heart of the Invid Empire and see how many ways they could tweak with the big cheese Regent himself. And they weren't even supposed to take out the super-sized slug themselves, either. Recon duty should have been left in the hands of the real "spooks", he had always thought. And low and behold, he had been proven right yet again. When the Chief returned, he was going to hear an earful, by God!

_' Damn, just why did I agree to this crawling around in the dirt trying to play sneaky-Pete with a bunch of overrated slugs anyways. Give me the Zentraedi any day. At least they didn't give me the overwhelming feeling to douse them with a giant salt gun every time that I had to fight them.'_

Trying to push down his own frustration and inner misgivings about this current snag on an already whacked out mission, the Topkick checked the rest of the men and women with him manning this part of the defensive perimeter. While he may have been a navy flyer by trade, it looked as if Captain Derringer had some Combined-Arms in him after all. Let's just see if the Invid were in any mood to agree with that assessment. The lifer took another look at the automated scanner right about the same time that his helmet mike went off.

"Are you guys detecting anything down there?" came the voice of Sylvia Voorhees, piloting the six-gunned Second Generation ADR-04 Mk XI Defender that was in an over watch position behind the Cyclone squad. Other Destroid/Cyclone combat teams had been set up in a similar fashion all around the REF perimeter.

"No, Lieutenant, not a peep. Not since the initial batch that were picked up to the west of us about fifthteen minutes ago, Knupf replied back in his standard, gruff, slightly gravelly voice. He was about to continue when the pinging from the motion scanner being held in his hand and it's master unit being carried by Corporal Shael became a lot more insistent. That was definitely not a good sign.

"What's that?"

"Looks like we got company coming over for dinner after all, Ma'am."

"My scanners aren't picking up.......oh my.....I see what you mean, Sergeant, "Sylvia said with a lot more calm in her voice than she was really feeling. Exhaling slowly to calm herself of the pre-battle jitters that she seemed always get, the Armored Cavalry pilot then switched over to the general TAC-Frequency.

"This _Silver Fox_ manning defense post Delta. We have enemy contacts in company strength approaching from this direction. Range 4 miles, ETA 90 seconds. Any assist would be much appreciated."

"Acknowledged, defense post delta. Have Diamondbacks 2 and 3 sitting on deck to provide CAP support if you need it."

"Then you might want to get them airborne, Lightning Control."

"We'll see what we can do. Hold them off for as long as you can. Lightning Control out."

Voorhees switched off her end of the general frequency radio channel just as her advanced targeting array began to single out and identify individual Invid combat ships that were quickly coming into range of her powerful anti-aircraft guns. They were going to be slamming smack dab into her position in less than a minute, and it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a dozen Cyclone jockeys and a single Destroid were going to be able to hold back a tide of vengeful slugs for long.

'_This is most definitely NOT going to be pretty. We are not going to be able to hold off against that many of them for long. I really hope that Captain Derringer knows what he is doing and that the major can get back here, because I have a feeling that we are really going to be needing him.'_

Voorhees could here Knupf down below issuing orders and steadying the squad of troopers with him. Two of the mechanized infantrymen broke out their specialty long rifles and began to sight in on the approaching enemy mecha, and Voorhees could only assume that those were two of Darmouth's frighteningly accurate and deadly Nightstalker snipers, probably Harper and Diaz . She watched the two ground pounders set themselves up and then gauge in with the rifles. A few moments later, a pair of tight beam energy discharges left their positions and off in the distance, a pair of faint smoke contrails appeared in the Invid formations. On Sylvia's scanners, two of the mecha tentatively identified as armored scouts blipped out of existence.

'_Then again, with more guys like those two, we may be worrying just a bit too much.'_

The Destroid officer continued to watch her screen with impressed fascination as four more of the speedy enemy craft were similarly snuffed out of existence. She was abruptly brought back to the situation at hand as an active participant as her targeting computer gave her the proverbial green light, and the entire cabin area of her robot went from it's normal pale luminescence to a more vivid pale crimson. Switching her weapons systems from stand-by to active, Voorhees closed her eyes for a moment, then re-opened them, hazel eyes flashing as her thumbs slid over the firing studs. This was it, she knew as she re-opened her squad's comm.-channel.

"Open fire, open fire!"

Following her own orders, she squeezed down the firing studs, and her Defender greeted the oncoming horde with six beams of death that swatted down almost a dozen Invid scout mecha before they hit the humans lines. The Cyclone Riders waited until the rest of the first wave were right on top of them before they opened up as well, cutting down the remaining light power armor units under a hail of Gallant energy rounds and sheets of wolverine 10mm slugs. This did not deter the remaining Invid mecha who slammed into the human lines even as the pair of Assault LEGIOS came diving in out of the sun.

--------

Angelina could feel the beads of sweat beginning to accumulate on the small of her back as she continued to stare down the four barrels and the four Invid command enforcers that were holding them. If she was in top form, she knew that she might have stood something of a chance against them, but in her current state, even putting more than the token resistance that she was already doing was going to be pushing it. Fight the Invid here, **_HAH! _**She could barely stand on her own without any one's help at the moment. At least there was one good thing about being made a prisoner of war by aliens instead of by her fellow humans.

'_Well, we were supposed to do a Recon of this place for the Main Fleet's push to help Admiral Hunter. I guess I can't get any closer than by being escorted in by this group. At least these guys won't try anything funny just because I am a woman. They probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference even if I pointed it out for them.'_

The lead Invid, the one who had told her to move, seemed to sneer as she curled her lips up slightly, and not quite having the grasp on human emotions as he thought that her did, mis-read to be a challenge, so he pressed his gun a bit more forcefully into her chest, knocking her back and causing the human to wince and yelp in barely suppressed pain. Before she could sufficiently record, the power armored alien reached down and plucked her handgun from it's holster.

"No more pausing human...we go now...The hive mind wants to speak with you."

The Invid that had decided to take command and direct her to where he had wanted her to go stated with that irritatingly synthetic voice. The other three were still keeping their distance, and their weapons were still directed at Spencer, although the glows that were present at the tips had died down for the moment. Before she could pull herself together and get up under her own power, the same Royal Enforcer yanked her up with no small amount of force and left Spence on her feet with a renewed sense of vertigo. However, this sudden change in perspective allowed Angie to take in a few more things that she had missed when the four Invid had actually got the jump on her, like the fact that there were actually six Invid Enforcers present, with two more up on the ledge that she had fallen down earlier when she had first stumbled upon this cave. What she saw next, however, made her blood run cold. She had only run into the damned things three times, and had nearly died each time. Both of the cat-like mecha, classified as Hellcats, glared down at her with un-living glowing eyes as they stalked between their masters on the upper tier.

'_Omigod, why did they have to bring those things here? Do they really want me to follow them or are they gonna feed me to those beasts?,' _Angelina thought as panic finally began to overtake her and she started shaking slightly, a new coating of perspiration breaking out on her skin. _'They are going to kill me! The Invid don't take prisoners! They just kill anything and everything that they feel is a threat to their galactic domination and that puts me as public enemy number one!'_

Angie looked about frantically at that moment, trying to find any avenue of escape, even though the rational part of her mind was telling her that unarmed and injured, her chances were slim to none without some sort of miracle. If only she hadn't gotten so cocky when she tried to back up those Zentraedi and deviated from the mission parameters. She knew why she did it, and she could only put the blame on that one man If only she hadn't run into him, then she would have been able to focus on the mission, and she would not be in this mess right now. At least he wasn't here right now to rub her final failure into her face.

"Damn You, Ryan!"

The Invid commander turned to look at the female human as she let out a scream of some sort, and her face began to flush, in spite of her trembling. This one was a strange one indeed. He had noticed that she was injured when they had found her, but his initial assessment and confirmation with the Central Hive did not think her injuries were that life-threatening as of yet. Perhaps there was something malfunctioning with this one's higher functions, and she would have to be put down just to be on the safe side. In all likelihood there more than just this one, and they could always capture and interrogate another one. But it was always a good idea to make sure first.

"You..human...are you ...functioning proper...." The Invid began to ask, but was cut off as the upper tier to the cave exploded from the impact of half a dozen high-explosive munitions ripping into and thru his overwatch team, outright shredding one of the Hellcats and both Enforces, and sending the remaining inorganic spinning to the ground below.

The remaining Enforcers each activated their energy shields and brought their weapons up to the ready, hunting for the new threat. The smoke made their visual receptors blurred, but they could definitely tell that the new threat was using protoculture, and had no problem in letting them know it either. They each looked at each other, then back at the entrance just in time to see what it was that had killed their two companions. The four plasma cannons began to glow in pre-fire intermix, and suddenly the human-shaped power armor spoke over it's helmet mike in a voice that made all the color flush out of Angie's face. It took her mind a few moments to process that he was also speaking in Invid, or Solugese as the other Sentinel races had referred to it as.

" You will release the woman, and I will let you all live."

'And what if we don't Tirolian, what will you do, try to kill us all," replied the Invid commander, confidence and superiority in his own voice as his targeting computer finally got a positive lock on the alien mecha.

The Power Armor wielder smirked thru his visor as he responded. The forearm blades to his armor had just finished sliding into place with a barely audible click.

"There will be no try about it, Invid. Leave her here now, and intact, and you live. You fail to heed my warning, and you try to harm her or take her, and you all will die.

No...I think you are mistaken, spawn of the Masters. The only one here who will die if they do not surrender will be you," The Invid sneered back as he noticed the remaining Hellcat begin to slink back up the ledge and prepare to pounce on the obstinate flesh-thing. "In fact, you will just die!."

As the Enforcer let out his challenge, the Hellcat took that moment to pounce on the seemingly unsuspecting Power Armor pilot. Angie felt a scream for the pilot begin involuntarily and subconsciously in the back of her throat, but it died just as quickly as the pilot pivoted and activated his own weapon systems, neatly severing the robotic cat's head forepaws from the rest of its fire and shrapnel-mangled body. The Enforcers did not pause for long as they watched the cat get mowed down by the cyclone rider, and opened fire on the man, hoping to mow him down before he could close on them.

The pilot continued to smirk darkly, his mind racing at miles a minute as he calculated his plan of attack while calmly deflecting the numerous plasma shots with his own energy blades. While this wasn't quite what they were designed to do, the pilot had been part of the original design teams with this particular weapons systems and knew a few extra "tricks" about them. With hard metal music blaring thru his helmet's mike system, he activated his thrusters and dove at the four remaining Invid with almost manic glee in his eyes. The human landed in front of the first opponent and put both blades thru it's chest in a power punch that sent it flying into the far wall, leaking nutrients mixed with it's greenish lifeblood. Before the first Invid could even settle completely to the ground, the pilot had already moved to his next victim and in one deft motion, brought his left blade under and inside the Enforcer's own shield and connected with the base of it's armored head, skewering it. Even as the all but decapitated alien began to fall, the pilot spun under and away from it, using his momentum to propel him at the remaining power armored Invid before it could line up a shot on him. It got off three shots before the cyclone rider was on top of it as well, the first two drilling it's fallen and falling partner in the back, and the third being absorbed by the right blade's energy field as the assassin closed in on it. It tried to smash the enemy with it's energy shield, only to have it blocked by the opposing energy blade.. As it swung to bring it's plasma rifle into play like a club, it too got parried by the other's free energy blade. They both went into a tug of war for a few moments, when the humanoid suddenly grinned, and then kicked the Invid in the sternum with a powerful armored boot. As the grey enforcer fell backwards, it tried to get off a final shot but it was already too late as the enemy power armor ducked under it's shots once more and then lifted it up as both blades protruded out of the Enforcer's back carapace. The Enforcer's eyes widened for a moment, then dulled as life escaped from them. The pilot then backed away and retracted the blades, allowing the Invid warrior to crumple to the floor in a heap.

"I win.", the pilot remarked without much emotion at all.

"Not yet you don't, alien,"

The pilot turned to see the remaining alien, that had somehow been overlooked in the fight was now holding the veritech pilot in front of him as a body shield with his left hand over her chest and throat to keep her close. The enforcer still held a smug look on his face as he faced down the thing that just dropped half a dozen of the Regent's own royal guard. The power armor pilot narrowed his eyes and clenched his fists as he tried to calculated hot to rectify the situation that he had gotten both him and Spencer into.

"It seems that I am the one who wins this day, Masters-spawn. Surrender now, and I promise I will make it quick for you."

::He bright his own plasma cannon up in his free hand and aimed at the center mass of the enemy power armor. He then noticed that his enemy was being very quiet, and that his "prisoner" has seemed to stop squirming.

"What is the matter, have nothing to say now that you have lost?"

The Invid began to toggle the firing switch when suddenly he felt a painful crushing pressure on his wrist, specifically the wrist holding the human female. He instinctively flung her away even as it's mind processed the fact that she actually had the audacity to bite him and pressed the firing stud to his cannon. The alien power armor pilot partially pivoted out of the way and fired back with the Protoculture powered energy cannon that was suddenly in his own hand, and drilled the Invid square thru his snout.

Angie blinked away the stars that were spinning about her eyes just in time to see the energy exchange and both power armors stumble back, and then the Invid fall over, green liquid pouring out of both ends of it's helmet. She wobbled over and kicked it solidly in the side before she turned to face the power armor pilot.

The pilot stumbled slightly, the impact of that plasma shot having more of a kick than he was expecting. It felt like there might be something broken under all of that armor and fibrous fabric, but he couldn't concern himself with that now. He popped the visor to his helmet and smiled wearily at the bloodied, and battered, yet still very spirited woman before him, his brown-red eyes twinkling with mirth.

"I told you I would go thru Heaven and Hell to rescue you, Angie," he said as he de-activated his CADS, and the blades slid back into their wheel hubs with a shnickt.

Angelina had to force herself not collapse completely at that moment, and instead allowed a mantra to run thru her head until she finally verbalized it, hers eyes dilating to near pinpricks of fluctuating color.

"Ryan Darmouth, Just what in the Hell are you doing here?!?!?

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And there ya go....after so long, another chapter down. Ther emay be a slight delay witht he next update, as I re-tool my mind and try working my creativity train on two tracks at once with a macross era fic that I promised the kids on the DYRL list that I would do at some point in the near future. Please review!

roll Macross ending music


	8. Chapter 07: Holding the Line

itiRobotech: Pyrrhic Wardance

- A Sentinels-MOSPEADA Serial

Chapter Seven: Holding the Line

By SithKnight-Galen

SK-G: Okay, people re-united, Invid splattered across the walls, now it is time to check in on the rest of this band of intrepid explorers and see how much more hell they can cause before they get wiped. Anyways, now that Ryan has had his moment in the spotlight, can his luck actually hold out long enough for the Invid, Angelina, or Brandon not to kill him. What happened to the Beta team that Dr. Zhao was leading….and what of the fighting on the line?

A/N 2: Disclaimer time. Once more, Macross, MOSPEADA, Sentinels and the Robotech franchise line do not belong to me. They are the cash cow of Carl Macek, his Harmony Gold Stoogies, and those mysterious backers with more money than sense who give it to him instead of me. If they gave it to me, I would actually fund a real RDF research project.

A/N:3 Thank you GPPR and YaoiYaoiYeah for your reviews. Please, let me know how I am doing and what you would like to see. Also, if you do decide to send flames my way, I do need to stock up since it does get a bit nippy where I live in the wintertime.

Okay, Time to stop prattling and time to start Storytelling.

==Enter Macross Theme==

The Beta streaked across the sky at near mach 4 speed, Whetstone literally putting the pedal to the metal as he tried to follow Darmouth's trail and re-trace his steps back to Lieutenant Spencer's downed Alpha. The trio in the back seemed to be just as anxious as the pilot in getting to their destination. It seemed that the Medical Doctor riding in the hot seat seemed to have a particular bone to pick, but Johnny could not tell if it was with the Major or the Lieutenant....or maybe it was both at this rate. The two armored foot soldiers just seemed to want to be anywhere but in the crowded bomb bay of his bird. Oh well, they got snagged along, so tough luck for them. They were on a time limit after all, and it sounded like the party had begun without them back at the base camp.

"So just how much farther is it to the crash site, Ensign," the Doctor asked thru his helmet's communicator, which was patched into the inter-ship comm array.

"Well, Doc, according to my former charts and the IFF transponder in Darmouth's Alpha, we should be coming up on it momentarily." Whetstone returned thru the open channel while double-checking his screens for what felt like the hundredth time in the last few minutes. "I am actually surprised that we didn't quite overtake him, since we are moving at what would be twice his maximum speed, unless he knows some sort of trick that I am not even aware of with robotechnology and aerodynamics."

'_You'd be surprised at what Ryan is capable of doing, especially when it comes to Angelina. I just don't understand why he always feels that HE has to be the one to be her "White Knight", even when she doesn't even want him in her life anymore. She is a big girl after all, and has long since outgrown needing him to be her Guardian Angel,' _Abraham thought ruefully to himself even as he turned to look back at the other two passengers. The two Corporals were almost a paroxysm of opposites, but they seemed to work well together, could follow orders, and were willing to die for their commander. Eric Joseph was a dark-complected man, about average in height with more than a bit of muscle to his stocky frame. He had been with the Iron walkers for awhile, since his transfer from the communications section of the _Ikazuchi-_class Command Carrier _Kenosha_, all but un-noticed until Darmouth took a notice of him during the Garudan campaign. Corporal Martin Elias was on the other hand, tall and slender, standing close to seven feet tall, and about as pale as one could get and not be considered an albino. He had just joined the Iron Walkers only a few weeks back during their last replenishment, right before Edwards' costly abortive coup of the REF headquarters back on Tirol. Elias was one of the many "astro-babies" who had come along with their parents who were part of the fleet, and then decided to join in the family tradition when they came of age. He had three older brothers who were all serving in various capacities throughout the fleet, and his baby sister was scheduled to enlist herself next year sometime. Zhao could only shake his head sadly at how like their enemies they had become. What exactly was stopping them from being another warmongering society like the Zentraedi or Invid anyways?

"I got a visual on Darmouth's bird now, at least I believe it's the major's Alpha," Whetstone's voice came over the mike pick-up in Abe's helmet, causing him to come out of his own reverie. "I guess that cloaking technology works even better than the eggheads were claiming it would, since there are Invid all over the place, but his bird seems to be intact."

"Is it safe for us to land down there then?" Corporal Joseph piped in thru the comm-channel, asking the same question that was on Zhao's mind. The field surgeon gave the armored infantryman a look but didn't say anything before Whetstone's somewhat nasally voice game back thru the tac-net.

"Well, it doesn't look like the LZ is hot, and the spot that both Spencer and Darmouth seemed to have picked to touch down seems to be big enough for us to be able to squeeze in, too. I am going to circle around and do one more pass just to be on the safe side, and then I'll bring us down."

The three passengers acknowledged and got settled for the bumpy landing. While VBF series veritechs were known for their versatility and even the ability to carry armored passengers from Point A to Point B relatively intact, comfort for said passengers had been left behind somewhere on the cutting room floor. Joseph and Zhao were both thinking the same curses about the Robotech Research and Development design department as the VT pilot brought them down quickly in a final approach that only VTOL style fighter jocks could appreciate. Elias, the greenie of the group, began to get a green hue to his complexion that was evident to Zhao even thru the tinted visor. Fortunately for the ground-pounders, the ride was over almost as soon as it had begun.

"We're down! All's ashore who's going ashore!," Whetstone called over the net, his voice having an obviously pleased sound to it.

The bomb bay hatch split and slid down, allowing the trio of cyclone armored soldiers access to the ground below. Joseph gave the others a thumbs up, charged up his Gallant H-90 rifle, then fell thru the opening in the floor. Elias, obviously feeling better now that they weren't moving, nodded to the doctor and quickly followed suit. There was a double chirp on Zhao's helmet comm, and then he too came down thru the hole to hit the ground below.. In his hands however, was a full field medical kit and portable crash case. With one, and possibly two injured pilots down here, one could never be too cautious. He turned to Elias, who had gotten some training as a pathfinder, and had volunteered for this because he said he could track their two wayward lambs in his sleep.

"Any sign of them?"

"Gimme just a moment, sir. Seems that there were multiple sets of tracks heading off in that direction, towards that formation of hills, or possibly caves. I would guess there were three, maybe four different groups, looks like only two of them may have been human though. One looks about 6-8 hours old, this batch of about 6 is maybe 2 hours old, and this one here is about 30 minutes if anything. It still has heat displacements where the footpads made contact with the ground."

Zhao followed the young man's trace along with his gloved finger. The kid may come in useful in this after all the RDF veteran had to think. Eric had pulled out some sort of motion or sound detection device and was fiddling with fine tuning it, pointing it in the same direction that Elias had indicated. Abe had to smirk for a few moments as he watched the other man tweak with the tracking devices. Eric was usually the group's linguist when it came to helping liberate the various people's from either Invid or Robotech Master Dominion, and it was a bit unusual for him to be doing a role-reversal with Corporal Shael. However, since the Cyclone company's First Sergeant was less than willing to part with the computer hacker, Abe got saddled with his under-study. Joseph seemed to know that the officer's eyes were upon him, as he finished with his fiddling very quickly and then began to move in the direction that the tracker had indicated. He traveled about six or seven dozen yards, when he turned back to the other two and flashed them both a thumb's up. Abe bet that the black man was probably grinning from ear to ear under his helmet visor, too. Elias nodded to Zhao and the two quickly moved out to join up with Joseph as he crested the hill in front of them.

"Hey Doc, I'm going to go ahead and link up the two working fighters, and then scuttle Spencer's bird," Whetstone's voice chimed into Zhao's helmet. The doctor had all but forgot about the pilot after he had touched back down on terra firma once more.

"Understood. Keep your eyes peeled, though. My team and I have found what appear to be some caves, and the motion detector is picking up something that could be a friendly or two inside. We may need to have a speedy extraction, so stay frosty, just to be on the safe side."

"You got it, Doc. Watch your back, and godspeed, sir."

Zhao smiled briefly as he crested the hill as he paused, and looked back to see the small figure that could only be the pilot making a beeline from his Beta to Darmouth's parked, but intact Alpha. He watched the small figure scramble aboard, then begin the process to link the two LEGIOS sections together. With that, the field surgeon turned back and followed the other two into the tunnel that they had found. After all, they all had their jobs that they had to do.

The first wave of Invid had been repelled in force, but it seemed that they had decided that they really wanted to know what these intruders on their turf were up to. Even after the first wave was annihilated and the second wave had been repulsed with heavy casualties on all fronts, the stupid slugs still could not take "NO" for an answer. And they were showing it by hammering the human defenses all across the perimeter as they had been doing with varying levels of success for the last two hours. Cyclone teams, working in co-ordination with Destroids working as fire support vehicles, were keeping the perimeter swept for the moment, but it was becoming more harrying with each new probe.

Corporal David Scott Shael and Staff Sergeant Hector "Deadpool" Diaz jumped behind another batch of rocks to use as makeshift cover. A barrage of plasma bolts lanced the air above them just as they made it to cover. After a few moments, the air still smoldering from the kinetic discharges of the Invid rounds impacting with the hard rock, Diaz and Shael poked their heads over the embankment. Diaz in one fell motion popped out his arm-mounted EP-40 cyclone pistol and cored a pair of scouts thru their sensor eyes. Shael dropped the third with a semi-controlled 10 round burst from his heavier infantry support rifle. Even as the three Invid mecha fell to the ground in death convulsions, the two cyclone riders ducked back under cover once more.

"Good grief! Just how many of these things are we going to have to wax anyways!," David puffed out as he popped his visor and took a long, refreshing drought from his canteen.

"I really wouldn't know.. Then again, we aren't paid to ask those kinds of questions, now are we?" Diaz quipped back as he scanned their immediate area with his laser rifle now that he had a chance to change out clips and smack a fresh one in. While the ATR-766 Penetrator's were nicely balanced and packed one hellova punch, their lack of ammo for the long haul was a distinct weakness that a lot of snipers had to make concessions for quickly if they were to survive.

"Gah, I knew I should have pushed harder for that transfer to the fleet."

"And what makes you think that….aha, there's a pair of sneaky bastards there….,' the lanky Latino man then quiet real quiet for a moment, then pressed the trigger to his instrument of death with two quick shots, dropped both of the inorganic cougars that were trying to sneak past their position with two well placed shots that blew through the armor of their craniums and disintegrated their central processors. He then glanced back at the Corporal, flashing the younger man his perfect white smile.

"Oh yeah, as I was saying. So what makes you think that the fleet would take a flat foot, bike jock like you anyways?"

"Oh, I don't know," David replied lazily with a smirk as he slid his visor back down over his helmet and sealing it back again. "Maybe they heard that I am the hottest thing behind a keyboard since Bill Gates and Chauncer McFrackney."

"Ahh gotcha, must be the ego then," Diaz retorted as he tracked a command Pincer, then drilled a hole thru it's brain-pan. He then began to line up his next shot without even losing stride.

"Ahh, you are a regular riot act, Sarge. Perhaps you should joi……Watch it!!"

Hector looked up and spun around even as he heard, no, felt the burst of energy go zipping just over his shoulder. The Invid enforcer had somehow gotten right up on them and was zeroing in it's rifle at the pair when it suddenly grew three smoldering holes in it's chest cavity. The sniper looked back to the Corporal as the Invid collapsed before the two of them only to see the kid pale from the split-second action. He wasn't quite so bad off as being shell-shocked, but the veteran knew that Shael could slip into it if he weren't distracted and quickly.

"Comon, Davey, break time's over. We gotta move to the next position," Hector said with a tone of urgency in his voice as he tapped the other man on the shoulder to get his attention. Motioning with his head, Diaz pointed out the other REF hit and fade squads re-positioning themselves yet again. Shael seemed to be a bit slow to respond so the non-com punched the other in the arm hard enough to knock the younger man sideways slightly. Shaking out the cobwebs in his head, David nodded in understanding to the sniper, his face still pale although his eyes were now focused. The duo went leap-frogging back with the others, setting themselves up to repel the next the Invid horde sent their way.

"I am here to rescue you, as I said already. You know that I would not leave you behind to be taken by the enemy," Ryan stated with a winning, yet cocky smile playing on his dark face.

The woman opposite him glared daggers thru Darmouth in a manner that was hard for the veteran Military Specialist to ignore. She had taken the time Ryan was congratulating himself on a job well done to stand up and was now beginning to simmer. Of all the people that it had to be, it was HIM! And she also knew in the back of her mind that he would have been the only one to pull of this kind of foolishness.

"And just what makes you think that I needed rescuing of any sort, Major Darmouth?'

Angelina's words slammed into Ryan and the smile faded from his mouth as a line began to crease it. However, he surprised even himself with the next words that came out of his mouth.

"Oh yes, you were most definitely putting up a hellish fight _indeed _from what I could see Angelina. But, how remiss of me, when have you **EVER **really needed anyone's help?"

"How dare you?!? Then you really do not know me after all, you pompous bastard! You may have been able to snow command with the crap that you pulled about my mother, but I've seen your true colors," Spencer spat out with venom as she moved a bit closer to the man.

"Obviously I know well enough, especially if you are like your mother. Actually, now that you bring it up, perhaps I should have just let the Invid cart you away. I mean they know exactly what one of their own kin…."

The right cross to Ryan's jaw was enough to send him reeling back, but in spite of the weight and force that was put behind it, it wasn't quite enough to knock the cyclone armored soldier off of his feet. Ryan's own eyes flashed red at the blindside shot, but he loosened his own fist, relaxing his shoulders and muscles before he could spring back at the woman.

"Don't you dare compare me to my mother, not like that, you murderer! You were the one that shot her in cold blood. You knew that the base hospital could have gotten that thing they put in her out, but you just had to fulfill your vengeance and killed her where she stood!" Angelina's eyes had steadied on a dark hue that was beginning to mist up even as her face paled from the pure emotion she was feeling at the man that she had once called a lover, and had vowed to destroy if she ever got the chance.

Darmouth merely smirks coldly at her, his own darkish eyes taking on a dangerous glow as he hears her charge. The taste of copper was still in his mouth, but he refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him spit it out, much less acknowledge it at the moment.

'_What the hell? She still blames me for **THAT**? I was following orders, and she knows that. Besides, what was I supposed to, let that old bag kill me instead, kill everyone else who had trusted her with their lives…kill you and our…but that didn't matter afterwards either because you blamed that on me too…that everything is my fault.. and I held all that…until now…..'_

"Good God, woman, you must be mental," Ryan growled out loud, his words sounding more guttural then normal thru his clenched teeth. "You were there, you know everything that happened and what the Invid had done to here in that damned lab of theirs, yet you still blame me, and I just want to know, why in the hell am I the bad guy in all of this? That thing was not your mother anymore, Angie."

"And just how in the hell would you know? Who made you God to make that decision? It must be so easy for you to just kill someone in cold blood like that and not even think twice about it, don't you, Major? Must be that infusion that granted you those all so mighty abilities, wasn't it Ryan? Wasn't it?"

The other man did not answer her, his own gaze hard, but the myriad of emotions running thru his eyes made his expression unreadable. He seemed almost to have stopped noticing that she was still in the cave with him, even though they were only three feet apart. He seemed almost to be brooding, but that dangerous glint in his off-colored eyes eventually forced Angelina to seek some kind of reaction from the man.

"Why the hell won't you answer me, you bastard? Why did you murder her? What did she do to you? You knew that damned slug was controlling her, just like you claimed one tried to control you…why didn't you help her? Answer me, **Damn You**!"

Spencer punctuated her last words with another more forceful swing of her right fist. However, this time the punch was blocked and caught before it could connect with her target. Ryan appeared to be studying the shaking fist that he had caught and restrained within one of his armored gauntlets with a sort of detached curiosity. He then spun it counter-clockwise as he put sufficient pressure on Angie's wrist causing her to release the fist as he lowered her hand. His own eyes took on an odd amber-ish hue as he glared evenly back at her now dark brown orbs. Then, Ryan looked slightly away for a moment, conceding this minor psychological victory to Spencer.

"You know good and well why I took Andrea down. There was simply no choice when it came to putting that round thru her head or watching her kill you," Ryan began in a voice that was barely above a whisper. "There really was no choice when it came down to it, even if you don't believe it, just like now. There was no way I was going to leave you down here, especially to those things." The last word comes out with more than a hint of venom in his voice.

"And why didn't you just do that, Major Darmouth? You know that you could have saved her? You could have taken another way other than killing her! The doctors saved you, why couldn't you have given her the same chance? What did she do that made you hate her so much? You claim that you still love me and that everything that you do, you do for me, but the one time that I really needed something from you, you failed me!," Angie shot back as the flood of tears and pent up pain finally rushed through her battered defenses. It was all Ryan's fault, he took her mother down because Ryan hated her for something and saw that as his way to take her out.

"Now you and I both know that you are reaching, Angelina. Colonel Andrea McMasters-Spencer was the woman who backed my admittance into the fleet and backed me up Do you think that that was something that I wanted to do. If it was anyone else other than you, I probably would have been still in shock until the came back around to finish me off like she did with the rest of my combat team. She may have been your mother once, but the woman that day was not the woman that you knew and loved. That creature was only an Invid agent of destruction at that point."

"And you are telling me that you would have done the same thing if it was me that had been infected by that spore instead of my mother?," Angie queried, the question barbed to Ryan on multiple levels. She wiped her at her eyes while she watched him, the anger still very evident along with the pain.

"You already know the answer to that."

"But I want to hear you say it. I don't care if both you and Command claim that it was your duty and you only following orders when you took the shot, I still want to hear it from your own mouth, Darmouth."

"We have already been over this before, and I don't see a purpose to this now, especially right now with us being this deep in enemy territory, oh, and umm, I forgot to mention this before because it wasn't exactly important, but I wasn't exactly sanctioned to come back to get you. Umm, as far as mission command is concerned, you were a write-off and well, even if I do bring you back, I probably will be spending the rest of this war in the stockade, provided we both live long enough to make it back."

Angelina paused for a moment at Ryan's word, as well as the obviously intense look on his face. She knew that the man could be evasive with information when he had to be, but when it came to military protocol or something that he usually felt was direly important he was unfortunately brutally frank about such matters. If Ryan Darmouth had actually gone to the point of dis-obeying a direct order and doing even half of what he said that he did….. then maybe the situation is more dire than Angie was willing to admit or thought that it was. Although yet again, he was being evasive with her question, even if it was somewhat valid with the more pressing news he had just relayed to her.

"You still didn't answer my question, Major Darmouth," the woman uttered in a low voice as she turned slightly towards the ledge that Ryan had popped thru a few moments before.

"That was because I did not see a reason to, _Lieutenant_ Spencer. What would be the point in me even trying to answer a question like that to your satisfaction? After all, you are not the first to ask me, and I can assure you, you would not be the first that would probably be less than pleased with any answer that I could give."

"Don't presume to know me THAT well, Major. I can still be more than unpredictable if you force my hand. Now why can't you give me even a simple answer for this?"

"Maybe because there isn't a simple answer for that question," Ryan cryptically responded as he began checking his on-board systems diagnostics. His face darkened momentarily as he registers the results. He looked up to see that Angie was watching him from above with a less than perfectly hidden look of situational concern on her face.

"What's going on?"

"Hmm, seems we might be getting company before too much longer. Someone just tripped the anti-tamper sensors I had rigged to my bird."

"Can you tell if they are friendlies or not?"

"Not yet, and not from here. We are too deep underground at the moment."

The worry was evident in Spencer's face now as she looked about with a bit of frantic anxiety in her already stiffened movements. She then perched herself behind an outcropping near the mouth of the tunnel leading back to the surface. Angie stared down the natural corridor intently, hand thumbing the firing selector stud to her re-claimed energy handgun She didn't notice the almost quiet thump of the metal shod boots landing on the ground behind her, and Angie nearly shot Ryan out of reflexive habit and fear than any conscious desire to drill him.

"Wow, didn't know that you wanted me dead that badly, Spencer," Darmouth quipped with a slight smile on his face visible thru the colored displays in his helmet. He had his rifle back out and was re-calibrating the scope with one hand even as he used the other to cut back on his emissions output with his wrist mounted systems board.

"I do, Major, I really do, but I do have to set some sort of priorities. And you did pretty much sacrifice your career to come after me, although I pretty sure that you'll end up getting a medal for all of this."

Darmouth's response to that was another quirk of his lip as his eyebrow shot upwards. He then tossed Angie his Gallant rifle and took her pistol.

"Well, it's good to hear that there are still some consistencies in the universe. You'll want the rifle, since you were always better than me at making people keep their heads down, and my Cyclone can probably take another hit or three before I am completely down and out," Ryan quipped as he checked the hand blaster's charge, nodding with approval.

"Well you would know, as you were the one who taught me how to do that. How else do you think a fighter pilot would come across those kind of skills?" Angie replied back, giving Ryan the first faint smile, as small as it was, that the man could remember in a long time.

The smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared, however, as Angie's greenish-brown eyes panned over Darmouth's body armor. She had know than he was hiding something, but wasn't exactly sure as to what it was until she looked at where the Invid has scored a lucky hit against the veteran cyclone jockey. Despite the dim light that the HUD in Ryan's helmet and the now active pen type searchlight attached to her flight helmet both provided, she knew now that the minor amount of liquid on the surface of the damaged area of the Cyclone power armor was not just lubricants.

'_Why is he trying to hide this from me, too? Does he not think that I can handle that he got himself wounded trying to save me? Or is it too much to ask for him to be up-front with me for once instead of constantly trying to play the superhuman white knight that he thinks he is. Why can he never change?'_

Ryan noticed that his partner had been scrutinizing him for a few moments and grew slightly self-conscious at the new-found attention. While he normally would have given his right arm for that kind of attention from the woman in this cave with him, now was not the time and not how she was studying him. He suddenly got that little nagging tingle in the back of his neck as he had a flashback to the numerous lab sessions during the aftermath of supposed mop-up actions on Tiberius and the hell that he had to go through back then. He then looked down at the spot that seemed to have caught Angie's attention, and noticed the blood seeping thru the armor for the first time.

_'How interesting…I didn't think the shot was that powerful. And here I thought that this armor was better built than that. What an interesting shade that makes against the armor, though,'_ Ryan mused to himself as he raised his free hand closer to his face to examine his own blood after wiping a good portion of it onto his gauntleted hand.

"Just how bad is it, Major?"

The voice of his companion brought Ryan back to the present with a small start, and he tried to flash her a smile to ease her concern.

"It's just a scratch. The armor just seems to have taken a harder hit to it's hydraulics systems than I thought it did. I am waiting for the on-board diagnostics system to finish as we speak."

"If you say so, Major," Angelina replied, her voice holding a tone that suggested to Ryan that she didn't quite buy the story. However, she didn't press him anymore on it as she turned to focus on the darkness in the tunnel beyond.

'_Hmm, how odd…I would have thought that she would have been happy to know that I got myself busted up even in this kinda thing. Oh well, maybe Abe was right and I should just shut off and out the past before it does destroy me…not like I haven't given it enough of a chance at it already, especially with her…..so many lost chances and so much pain,'_ he thought as he watched Angelina from the corner of his eye. She had changed a lot in the three years and two months since they had last been a couple, but she was still the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen, just like the first day that they had met. She still held that slightly superior look in her eyes, even as battered as she was here, and that aura of command about her had only grown in the intervening time. Ryan's heart skipped a beat as he began to travel down memory lane, but he quickly cut off that line of thought as he thought that he saw what looked like reflections of searchlights off in the distance down the tunnel.

"Looks like we are going to get some company after all," the VT pilot muttered just loud enough for Darmouth to hear as she repositioned herself into a slightly better firing position against the out-cropping she was using for cover. The military specialist's answer was to slide his visor back into position and activate his shoulder mounted targeting computer as they both waited for the unknowns to come into range.

'_I wonder if I should tell her the truth. I wonder if she knows how often that I think back to that day or wonder how I could have saved any of them, but especially her….'_

Corporal Eric Joseph really did not like enclosed places very much, and was not all too eager to go into the over-sized gopher hole when Marty had figured out that it was probably the most logical route that both Lieutenant Spencer and the C.O had both taken, and not too long ago either by the looks on the scanner. Eric still had to wonder why in the hell that he had volunteered to take the point when they did go subterranean. It wasn't like he was a trained tunnel rat, or even enjoyed being in the places. Truth to be told, he was slightly claustrophobic, but here he was, scurrying around in some hole looking for two people who command probably had already written off anyways. He was about ready to call this one a wash himself when he got a definite pair of pings on his scanner. The dark man paused, and ran a second sweep of the area in question, and smiled slightly when the results came back positive once more.

"Do you have something, Mr. Joseph?" Doctor Zhao's voice almost whispered through his comm-link. They were all using their comm-links to makes sure that they were less detectable, but even then it seemed that the combat surgeon was taking it to the next level, not that Eric saw an issue with that. Safety was always a GOOD thing in his book.

"I think so. I just did two sweeps of the area in front of us, and got back what appears to be two solid contacts, about 300, maybe 400 meters ahead of us and a bit down. I'll probably have to get closer to know for certain though."

"Well, the tracks made by the battle armor wearer are consistent with whatever was going down this way," Elias said while running his chest lights over a section of ground just ahead of the duo. The other corporal was cradling his rifle as he sifted thru some dirt while studying the ground and the tracks around them.

"So we are on the right track then, yes?"

"Umm, if you want to call it that, yes. However…"

"However, what Mr. Elias?" Doctor Zhao's voice came thru the TAC-Net. His enthusiasm for finding Darmouth and Spencer was still evident, but was now being bridled by well-honed caution.

"Well, sir, it , well…there is something odd about what I am looking at, I just can't figure out what it is yet."

'_Well, that was just what I wanted to hear,' _Eric thought un-easily as he watched Martin go back and forth over the trail for what seemed an eternity before he motioned everyone else forward with a silent wave of his hand.

Re-gripping his Gallant in his right hand, and keeping the motion scanner firmly held in his left, Eric once more began to creep forward down the tunnel, the un-ease he was feeling refusing to go away. He kept trying to tell himself that it was just nerves, but every time he glanced back and saw the patient anxiety in Zhao's visored face or the alert nervousness in Martin's eyes every time he paused to sweep his heavy bore gun down the corridor, Corporal Joseph could tell that he was not the only one getting the spooky vibes. The trio continued to slow crunch their way down the tunnel, relying on both low-tech and high tech means to get closer to what they were hoping was their quarry. Joseph kept one eye on the monitor hooked into his HUD and the other on just about every shadow that played off of the light around them, while Elias kept himself hugged against the opposite wall from the other two, stopping and re-checking the various faint tracks on the ground ever few dozen meters.

Martin had just paused and ducked to check the ground a bit closer at yet another bend in the pass when a shot suddenly rang out, and the energy blast sizzled into the wall just above the tracker's head. All three REFers ducked to opposite sides of the cavern even as their targeting computers all came online. Eric was trying to get the scanner to lock onto a target, but the only thing the bloody computer seemed to be detecting in the immediate vicinity was the three of them and a pair of humanoids about 40 meters up ahead.

"Just what in the hell was that!" Martin yelled into the comm-link as another shot tore into the rock face just over his head.

"That is what I am trying to find out. This damned machine of Shael's just crapped out on me, though!," Eric shot back as he ventured a look down the corridor. His inquisitiveness was rewarded with a trio of quick energy shots into the wall less than a foot from his face, forcing him to duck his head back around the corner before it was blown off. Both he and Elias replied in kind by opening up with long bursts from their own guns, not exactly accurate, but it might cause the other side to duck if they valued self-preservation.

"Hold your fire, you idiots," the doctor's voice hissed over the comm-line after a moment. It was then that Joseph noticed that Zhao had re-slung his own weapon and was standing back up. "Don't you two realize that those are probably the people that we are looking for?"

"Well, doc, that is all fine and good," Martin retorted as he glanced warily back down the corridor. "But you might want to tell them that we are the good guys then, if that is really the case."

"That is what I intend to do, Corporal," Abraham replied as he popped the visor to his own Cyclone helmet. There was a confident smile on his face as he turned to look down the hole.

"This is Doctor Abraham Zhao of the Robotech Expeditionary Force's 17th Advanced Tactical Armored Corps. Who is it that I am addressing?"

"Stand down and come on forward then, Doc! You might as well bring your escorts along with you since they have more of a danger of shooting each other in the dark than actually hitting either of us!"

Abe looked down at the two enlisted men with a very enigmatically self-satisfied look on his ageless face before he began walking down to meet up with the carrier of that voice. The two younger men shrugged at each other and then as one, they both raised themselves to a standing position and followed the confident doctor the last stretched that separated them from their would-be attackers. As they approached the outcroppings and what appeared to be an opening ahead, Eric had to re-assess his earlier confident opinion about the medical officer.

When the doctor had called out to them, Angelina lowered her weapon slightly and gave Ryan a slightly surprised look. The expression on his face was not one of surprise, however, but more one of detached calculation. His eyes narrowed for a moment as he counted and made out three armored forms moving towards them. Fortunately for the REF, the Invid had rarely grasped the concept of subterfuge, so that had to be members of their assault party here to bring them back home. However, that brought up a new series of questions in the senior officer's mind. He knew that he would get those answers before too much longer, though, although whether he would like them or not would be another matter completely.

As the REF medical doctor approached, Angie smiled and sighed in relief upon seeing more friendly soldiers so far behind what could only be called enemy lines. She knew that all four of these men were here because of her, one way or another, and she knew that she was indebted to them for that, even Ryan. She got back to her feet a bit unsteadily when all three of the newcomers were in visual range.

"Ahh, Major Darmouth, Lieutenant Spencer, Captain Derringer sends his regards," The doctor said with a guarded smile as he approached the duo. He seemed to regard the two closely for a moment before he spoke again, and Angie got the distinct impression that she knew him from somewhere, but couldn't quite place where.

'Ryan, before you even ask," The combat medic continued as he checked Spencer over, and dabbed a salve over her bruised and exposed skin on her leg. "The captain is about ready to spit out restraining bolts after that little stunt you pulled, but I doubt he's going to bust your chops too badly until we get back to Tirol, if we make it back."

"What do you mean?" Ryan queried as he went to the other two soldiers to get a heads-up on the situation with the rest of the mission.

"Well, there was a huge furball brewing just before we touched down. Seemed the Invid got tired of hunting down stray Zentraedi hold-outs and decided come sniff out our base camp. From the initial reports on our way in, they seemed to have knocked back the initial wave, but more were en-route."

Spencer paled noticeably and Darmouth's expression only darkened. He began stomping off the way of the entrance when Corporal Joseph stopped him, only thinking maybe he shouldn't have gotten in the way of his superior officer only belatedly. Darmouth had a look of well controlled murder in his eyes, but instead of assaulting the poor comm officer, he turned back to his friend and the woman that he still loved inspite of their painful past.

"You should not have come for us, Abraham. We could have found out own way out, and I am sure that you are more needed back at the ranch than you are out here hunting down one wayward sheep and one most definitely black coated one,' the man muttered in a low voice.

Angelina separated herself from the doctor with a surprising burst of speed and closed in on Darmouth again.

"You are one to talk. At least he had gotten official backing to do what he thought was right, Major Darmouth. Those are my friends and comrades there as well, if you hadn't forgotten, Major, and I for one, do not want to leave them to die when they need us there to help."

"Well said, Angelina Spencer, and here I always wondered what the good Major had seen in you." Abraham merely smiled politely at the mildly shocked look on the pilot's face and the just less-than-murderous one coming from his boss. "You seem fit enough for travel for the moment, so I suggest that we make a hasty egress before our ride outside begins to think that things might be getting a bit too hairy for him to stick it out for us come back out to him at our leisure."

"Then let's move it out people. We are on a timeline here!"

With that, Darmouth took the point and the five soldiers took off back towards the entrance. Darmouth gave Spencer one final look, but turned back around and focused on the task ahead of them after mentally shaking off the cold glare that she had given him back. After a few minutes of mulling it over and hearing only the crunch of the armored boots against gravel and silt underfoot, Ryan popped open his mike to speak with the good doctor.

"You know that was not very kosher, bringing that up with her, especially now."

"What harm is it going to do, Ryan? I doubt that she even remembers me, much less cares what some stray ground-pounder sawbones has to say anyways. Besides, I can now see what you like about her."

"Oh really, and what is that?" Ryan asked with a carefully neutral tone, not sure if he really wanted to hear the other's answer.

"Well she is rather cute, when she isn't too busted up…lovely eyes, great legs, a cute as.."

"Don't even think of going there, Zhao."

"Why not? She is available, after all," the doctor shot back with a smile evident on his face. There wasn't much that could get Ryan irked, but it seemed the topic of one Angelina Drucilla Spencer seemed to be one definite trigger point with his Commanding Officer.

"Well continue this when we get back, Doctor Zhao."

With that the comm-line fell silent as Darmouth concentrated on getting his little band back to the surface and back to the command that he had so recently abandoned on this little quixotic expedition for a person that should have rightfully been left in his past. Abraham had to grin at his commander's back as he thought about the situation. If they could all just survive this war, he had a feeling that he wanted the ringside seats to the next episode in this unfolding drama…unless one or both of them would decide to come clean with their feelings and stop hurting each other. Oh well, he already had placed his bets on this little drama a while back. With that, he also turned his attention to the run to the surface.

Closing thoughts SK-G: And thus, Chapter Seven is finally done and up. So Ryan rescued Angelina, but not without some cost, which are all not completely evident just yet. And what is going exactly back at the "Ranch?" Well, tune in next time to find out!!!

I also wanted to thank GPPR for her wonderful rendition picture of Major Ryan Andre Darmouth and Lieutenant j.g. Angelina Drucilla Spencer. You can see this and many other wonderful drawings by this talented woman by clicking in her name in the author's section here. I would post the address, but it seems that I am not allowed to here, check my author section for links as well.

Well, until next time!!!

==Roll Macross closing theme==


	9. Chapter 08: Shaken, Not Stirred

Robotech: Pyrrhic Wardance-

A Sentinals-MOSPEADA Serial

By SithKnight-Galen

Chapter Eight: Shaken, Not Stirred

SK-G: Alrighty, now that we have seen Darmouth and the crew rescue Angie, let's find out what was going on back with the main crew back at Ground-Zero.

A/N: Standard disclaimers, so if you wish to sue, you win the same thing that the Imperial Japanese Army got when they invaded Vietnam in 1940...a half-decade of pain and frustration..not to mention a very persistant and nasty case of jungle rot that just would not quit....and then there was the Viet Cong and Ho Chi Minh to deal as well.....

A/N 2: Sorry this took a bit of time. As I am having to type this on the local community college computers during free spells between training sessions, I think I am doing pretty good. I do want to apologize about the un-expected hiatus, however. I do hope that every one had a wonderful holiday season!

A/N 3: Cool, another new reviewer. Thank you for your comments, TouchedByDarkness. I hope that i can throw a bit more originality into the characters as they develop within the story as I try to put things on paper, or screen in this case, instead of just in my head. GPPR, thank you once more for your many thoughts and words...it is what helps keep me going!

On with the story! :

-----Roll those Intro Credits and Cue that Macross Intro Music----

The Defender rocked backwards on it's heels as it's pilot fought to keep the Mecha upright. The latest salvo of plasma fire from the Invid strafers had almost knocked the Robotech Mecha completely out of the fight with their last pass, but now was it's turn to return the favor. Voorhees allowed the targetting recticules to center on both of the "tail-end-Charlies" in the formation and as the circlets flipped from green to amber, she squeezed down forcibly on both firing stubs, sending out six steady streams of light energy into the two hapless Invid. Both Armored Scouts seemed to hover in mid-air momentarily before they both expanded outwards in billowing plumes of flame and debries. Before the rest of the formation could even respond, the Anti-Aircraft Destroid continued to pour death upon them with sweeping arcs that engulfed the entire flight, sending each one of them to rapidly join their two destroyed brethren. Even as the remains of the Invid dive-bomber formation finished pelting off of the armor of the valiant REF Mecha, it's pilot was already looking for more game to snipe from the sky.

"Okay, just how many more of these flying slugs are we going to have to swat from the sky anyways?" Sylvia asked to no one in particular ver the Tac-Net. She popped her visor for a moment to wipe the sweat from her eyes with one gloved hand even as she spied all of the sporadically massed movement along the perimeter.

"Who only knows, S.F. They seemeed to want to only test us at the moment." came back the reply over the net. Voorhees grumbled at the cryptic reply from her team leader, but she knew that he was right. She was about to click back in and retort back when all of the sudden her proximity sensors started to blare in her ears, causing her to wince involuntarily.

"Silver, ge tout of there, Now! You got heavy movers inbound!" First Lieutenant Tribanuiski, Voorhees' , unit commander suddenly bellowed over the Tac-Net. She Voorhees frantically looked onto her scanners, trying to find the bogies that her CO obviously had seen closing on her position.

"I don't see anything on the ground!"

"They are closing on you, Walker 03. Fall back now!"

"Dammit, I don't see anyth......AGGHHHH!," Sylvia screamed as she was thrown against her console forcibly, and then yanked back into ther cushioned chair once more by the five point harness that kept her strapped into her chair. This time, her Mecha could not keep upright amd she found herself falling forward with no way to stop it. She was glad now that Knupf had moved his infantry squad out and away from unit when the Invid had made their initial push. Unfortunately, they probably would have been able to be the eyes and ears that she needed in order for her to have seen whatever the hell it was that was trying to beat it's way thru her Destroid and into her. It sounded like it or they were doing a pretty good job at it, too. She was still soemwhat dazed and inverted when she was startled by the sound of her comm-unit coming back on.

"Hang on Silver!"

She wanted to answer with one of her trademark snappy re-torts, but what came out was, "Ughhrrr...r-r-right...."

Sergeant Melvin McClellan brought his Tomahawk over the rise of the hill just in time to see the pair of Shock Troopers rise from the ground and topple Voorhees' stranded Defender. Responding almost by instinct, he began to pour particle beam blasts into the righthand mecha while rapidly closing the distance to the second one. he got about half-way to his teammate when another pair of Shock Troopers suddenly blew themselves out of the ground just in front of the surprised Destroid jockey. McClellan side-stepped one of the newcomers and then raised his arm to block one of the massively powerful fist/claws from the other Invid. Before the Shock Trooper could make a second swipe, however, it suddenly keeled over, spewing green nutrient from it's suddenly ruptured sensor eye. Not bothering to see who was playing guardian angle for him at the moment, the veteran pilot turned and vaporized the other Invid with a quick series of shots from his prticle beam cannon.

_'Smoke off, ya flaming harridans,' _the man thought as he pushed his Mecha forward, stomping his way towards his fallen comrade once more. As he moved forward, he noticed about half a dozen cyclones break cover and swarm the one remaining Invid, and one of the little armoured juggernauts paused in his striding long enough to give him a thumbs-up before sprinting to re-join his comrades. That cheeky bugger was probably the one who took out that other "Lobster." Seeing that the ground pounders had the same object that he did, he decided to cover their advance, taking note that another one of the unit's Destroids was moving into another overwatch position on the other side of him.

'_Good to see that all of that bloody training that the Major insisted we work on in simulation and live-fire exercises is actually paying off now that the crap literally is blowing all over the bloody fan. Silver was right, though. Just what in the hell are these guys up to. If they were to really put their hearts into it, they could've wiped us out completely at anytime, but they just keeping sending in more of these heart-hearted assault waves that are doing nothing more than wearing down our patience and our bloody supplies. Why don't these stupid sods get off their duffs and either pound us back to the Age of the Clans or just give it up already!'_

Stomping over, Melvin sees what he can do to help out the ground pounders that were now surrounding Sylvia's Defender like it was a recently discovered pirate's treasure.

After the pounding on the back, or in this case, top of her Mecha had stopped, Sylvia looked around for a few moments trying to fight down the rising sense of panic that she was feeling was threatening to overwhelm her. She began to try to get her machine to restart, but it decided that it was going to be stubborn on her again. She had noticed that this seemed to happen everytime that she was not quite up-right and had to deal with the damned machine kicking out on her. Her frustration nearly got the best of her and she was about the kick the board after the sixth start up attempt just to stop the bloody machine from mocking her when she suddenly felt herself being pivoted backwards and upwards.

_'What the...? What's going on now?...hmm, maybe I can get it going now...' _

Hitting the start-up sequence one more time, Sylvia was pleasently surprised to see that all of her major systems came back online, although more than one was not reading in the green at the moment. At the same time that the all too familiar glow of her consoles lit up the cockpit, her comm unit came to life in her helmet's mike once more.

"Silver....Sylvia, can you hear me? It's me, Mel. Comon, lass, pick up the horn and give me a holla..Sylie-girl?"

"Yeah,... yeah, I hear you," Voorhees replied, trying to shake that odd feeling of vertigo and claustraphobia from her body. There was a sudden hoarseness in her voice that she couldn't quite shake off, but at least she could say that she was still alive.

"So how bad does it look? My systems say that I am good to go, but not everything is running completely up to par."

Melvin took a look at the damage that the Invid had done to his partner's Destroid and had to wince. While it wasn't too comprimising, it wasn't all that pretty either. Most of the rear armor had been shredded, as if by an apple corer, and the left missile launcher's feed tube could be seen from even where he was at. She could still fight, but she was now very much exposed.

"Well, let me put it this way, you could stay out here, but you take another really good hit, and well, let's just say that it won't be that pretty."

At that point, one of the Cyclone Riders spoke up as well, jumping onto the Tac-Net. Melvin thought that it was probably the one that was still hanging onto the Destroid and was checking things out with a diagnostics kit in his hands.

"No offense, ma'am, but I gotta agree with the Sergeant's assessment. It looks pretty rough on the back end there. From the looks of it, while you are still operational, without getting ya back to the bays, you might end up doing mor eharm to yourself than you would any hostiles. Your reactor is still holding up fine, but your gyro is cracked, and it looks like half of the coolant lines for the laser capacitators are severed. You might be lucky to get another two, maybe three salvoes out of the missiles before they probably overload as well."

'_Great, just great_.' Voorhees thought as she saw what the combat engineer was informing her of as the diagnostics systems began reporting back their results. "Alright, Fitz, thanks for the heads-up. I guess I am out of this fight for a bit."

"Gotcha, Eltee. We'll cover the front for a bit more. Keep the homefires warm for us, lass."

The Power Armor pilot nods and then switches frequancies. He says something to the others below, and one of the others jumps onto the other shoulder of the wounded robot. The one with the Sniper rifle salutes to the one who had given the diagnostics and then the other four swarm up and around Mel's mecha, setting up something of a defensive perimeter around their big brother while the Defender limped back to the Horizont and it's bunkers, which was currently the force recon company's field headquarters. Sergeant McClellan smirked as he watched the GroPos watch his back as he and SFC Baxter watched their friend and teammate make it back to base for much needed repairs. Melvin's smile disappeared as the Phalanx missile boat further down the line suddenly exploded like a pinata in a cascade of exploding mutions and expanding armor plating. The hapless trio of armored infantry that were near it were thrown about like rag dolls by the fireball and before any of them could recover, were all pounced upon by over a score of new Invid Armored Scouts being backed up by close to fifty of those damned Hellcats. Melvin and the other Destroids converged their firepower knocking down at least half of the Invid untis before they even realized what was happening. The remaining Invid mecha, however, did not waste time in trying to decide wich target was the biggest threat as they decided enmasse to scatter and attempt to take out all of the invaders with a suicide charge.

_'Madre dios, where are they al coming from? Don't they realize that they are just throwing their lives away, or do they even care at this point?,' _Staff Sergeant Hector Diaz thought morbidly as he lined up yet another target as he beagn to dish out once more the deadly business in which he was a master at. It seemed that for every hostile that he took down, there were two more to replace it, and they just kept coming. What was really aggrevating him and all of the other human combatants was that there was just enough of them to tax the defense lines that had been set up without completely breaking them. Diaz tried to push the thoughts ou tof his mind to focus on yet another target, providing support fire for his teammates and the massive Tomahawk that was throwing out a devestating hail of return fire at the oncoming horde. Not even bothering to glance at the other members of his fire team, Diaz, or "Deadpool" as he was known by as the other members of his combat unit, just continued to put deadly accurate rounds into each one of the oncoming Invid as they rushed towards him. As the sniper rifle ran empty, Deadpool re-slung the sniper rifle and re-activated his arm mounted beam pistol, switching it to fully automatic and adding his own firepower to that of his teammates and the larger units that they were providing support for.

"Keep it up! They are going to break any moment now!," Senior Lieutenant Marquis Tribanuiski yelled over the main Tac-Net to the Armored Infantry and their support Destroids as they pushed back the second wave of Invid that were pushing forward and trying to break through the REF defenders' lines. He manuvuered his own Destroid, a newer style Spartan Urban defense armed with an Alpha's GU-XX 35mm autocannon in his robot's hands and a pair of high powered shoulder laser cannons, into a more defensive positon as he began to drill another group of oncoming Invid that were threatening to overrun the position that he and the squad of Cyclone riders were assigned to hold. They had been at this constantly for close to 6 hours now, and the lieutenant was beginning to wonder just how much longer they were going to have to keep doing this before they were either going to be pulling back, the Invid would run out of troops to throw at them, or would finally get serious and wipe them all out with overwhelming force.

The Spartan's acquired hand cannon clattered out round after round into the oncoming troops as they advanced, however, the combined hail of balaistics and energy fire seemed to do little to deter the kamikaze aliens from all but trying to roll over the human defenders. Tribanuiski continued to sweep his guns over the oncoming tide, trying to take out or do as much damage as he could to the tide that was about to crash into him and his men. His autocannon ran out just as the surviving Invid were close enough to go hand to hand. The first shock trooper that crashed into the 14 meter tall Mecha was similiarly knocked backwards, it's head and crew compartment crushed by the impromptu club that the human mecha was wielding. The second Invid that came rushing in met the same fate and also collapsed to the ground before the first had even stopped bouncing. Number three took a solid kick to the chest area knocking it back, and the fourth was blown out of the air at point-blank range by the twin shoulder-mounted laser cannons. The next trio had just taken to the air when they suddenly disappeared, replaced by three expanding clouds of raining shrapnel. Marquis looked about for a moment with both visuals and sensors, and the sight that he saw made him yelp for joy.

The pair of LEGIOS assault craft spun out of their respective strafing runs and pulled back up to gain some altitude. Lindsey smirked as she watched the results of his handiwork. Ensign Nabiki Ishitaga's Diamondback Four flew alongside and was matching his own bird move for matching move. The two of them, along with their Beta components had been selected to provide CAP for the infantry for this sortie, and so far, it seemed as if they were pushing the thrice-damned slugs back yet again. The two combination planes seperated from their abreast flight as soon as they had reached the optimal dive altitude and hunted for more packs of Invid mecha and inorganics to wipe into the next lifetime. As she looked around, Neiquiest spotted a cluster of Invid that were coming in low to the ground, attempting to re-enforce their own beleagured breathren. That was something that she knew she couldn't allow, and it seemed like the other pilots agreed with her.

"Firebrand, permission to light up their lives?," Ishitaga's sing-song voice came over the tac-net. The other woman was also a very good pilot, but she occasionally went overboard on the ordanance department when it came to ground combat missions. Lindey only had to think about for a second before she gave her permission. The other LEGIOS gave a flap of its wings and then dove straight into the middle of the column of unsuspecting Invid. The co-joined pair of mecha opened up on the column as they came diving out of the sun like a super-sized bird of prey, vaporizing half a dozen mecha before the rest could even react, which for most of them meant going to evasives as they tried to identify this new threat. Diamondback Four dived down to the deck in search of her prey and shot down another half dozen scouts before they could get out of her way. Lindsey decided that Nabiki and her partner had had enough solo fun and decided to go ahead and bring her own ship down to play. That was when it all went horribly wrong.

Ensign Ishitaga was flying Nap of the Earth and had just got another flight of fleeing scouts in her sights when the ground around her seemed to explode upward in about a dozen gysers of rock and dust. From the brief cloud of obscurity came a dozen Royal Enforcers, their plasma cannons already glowing from full charges as they took aim and opened up upon the helplessly trapped fighter-bomber. The Beta pilot, a new man named Neubauer tried to push the thrusters into overdrive to escape the plasma charged that the two pilots found themselves in and wa sonly partially successful. The numerous deadly discs of energy connected with the Beta portion of the LEGIOS, causing to crumple in on itself before it's proto-culture enhanced nuclear powerplant was ruptured, causing the mecha to go critical and then quickly be consumed in it's own resulting fireball. Diamondback 4 Alpha was quickly engulfed in the resulting flamewave, and it looked as if it too was completely consumed in it's mate's fiery demise. The Invid nearby couldn't escape the expanding cloud of deadly explosives as the Beta's onboard reflex torpedoes exploded as one, increasing the magnitude of the explosion by quite a bit.

Lindsey could only watch helplessly as another pair of her squadron mates were killed, this time by a suicidally effective Invid ambush. Ishitaga's scream still echoing in her ears after the other's mecha had ceased to exist and her anguished scream was cut off aburptly. Linquiest accellerated to flank speed and blew past the few surviving enemy mecha, destroying each one of them with a few flights of deadly short-range missiles as she blew past them. Lindsey, however, was not really paying them much attention as she tried to fight down the tears and the wellspring of emotions that were threatening to overwhelm her. Nabiki had been a good friend of hers, and like Angelina, had been one of her bridesmaids at her wedding the year before. Now, both of them were goine and within twenty-four hours, too. She had just felt the first stinging tear making it through her shut eyes when suddenly her wingman and the love of her life broke thru her thoughts as well as the dreadful silence of her cockpit.

"Hey, hon, I gotta question for ya?" Steven asked in a somewhat quietly curious voice. He had been pre-occupied with controlling the majority fo the two ships weaponry to allow his other half to contentrate on the flying. They had mutually discovered at some point along their partnership that this arrangement actually worked out pretty good for the two of them. "Umm, do the Invid have anyways to pick up transponder signals from downed pilots?"

His question snapped Lindsey back to the present and her brow furrowed as she looked at her husband on the the Tac-Net's visual display on her center console.

"Not that I am aware of, at least not with the rank and file Invid anyways. Why?"

"Well, I think I saw a chute pop from Nabiki's bird, and I am now getting a Tansponder beacon, but that is it." There was a pause for a few moments as Steven continued to scan his monitors across the board trying to make a definite confirmation. At the same time, Lindsey swung their plan around to see if there was anything that she could spot visually by flying over the area one more time.

"That doesn't look good. I read at least a dozen hostiles trying to close in on her position."

"Yeah, I see it to, I am going to begin another attack run on them."

"Right," Steven replied back as his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. "Hmm, maybe we should call some of those walking behemoths below us to earn their keep and support us."

"What don't think that we can't handle this ourselves?" his wife shot back over the comm-line.

"It's not exactly that. While I am not the first person who wants to go ask help from ground pounders, right now we could use any and all of the help that we can get. besides, if nothing else, we can always think of it as payback for us having to wax those convoys for them."

"Well, you do have a point. Gimme just a minute here." Lindsey then switched frequancies. "Diamondback two to Ironwalker Lead."

A armored man in his late twenties or early thrities popped onto the screen. He smiled at her, but there was more than a hint of weariness in his eyes and at the corners of his mouth.

"Tribanuiski here. What can I do ya for, Diamondback 2?"

"We just had a pilot shot down and we need a ground assisted EVAC."

"Alright. Gimme the co-ordinates and we will see what we are capable of doing to help you in that endeavour. An eye for an eye and all of that."

"Here they go, we are going to be staying in the area anyways, so just home in on us."

"Got it. Well, here we go!"

With a smile and a nod, the Destroid officer clicked off and Lindsey turned her own attention back to the task at hand. She finally saw what appeared to be the ejection capsule from the Alpha section as well as just over a dozen of those freakishly human-like hunter-killer Hellcats that the Invid seemed to enjoy deploying in such numbers. The pilot brought her own mecha down, pushing her throttle to just below sonic speed as her targetting recticules began to fill up with targets in the rich enviornment that she had just provided for herself. However, knocking down obstacles wasn't her job this go round, so she let her partner have his brand of fun as she flew about the perimeter. The inorganics themselves were not too hard to destroy, once they were actually hit that is. However, out and out destroying them wasn't the immediate goal of the two Niequietsts at the moment. Hammering the first of them back with a combination of short range armor-peircing missiles and autocannon fire from the Beta's belly-mounted gun, the LEGIOS forced the Hellcat pack to either stay on course to the escape pod and die or scatter and possibly continue to function for a bit longer. Most of them quickly chose the second option; the slower ones weren't given any time to re-consider.

Just as the LEGIOS completed it's initial strafing run and Lindsey began to ease up on the throttle to pull them about for another run, Steven detected multiple ground vibrations and was about to shout out a warning when the ground belwo them once more exploded into geysers of rock and dusts as the Invid attempted to spring their trap once more. This time, however, the humans were ready for this particular trap, having seens it's devestating effects once before. Steven unloaded a slavo of aft firing missiles even as Lindsey took over manual control of the Alpha's autocannon system and pot-shotted the two lead royal enforcers in front of her right out of the sky before they could even complete their jump in the air, much less set up any return fire. LIndsey then spun the fighter on it's axis as she punched over to Gerwalk mode with the leg boosters thrown fully in front at full burn to completely arrest the ship's forward momentum, further throwing off the Invid's aim. Steven took advantage of this momentarily lull in being hammered to drop three more of the Enforcers with a dozen well placed plasma missiles from the main missile launchers. Lindsey quickly scanned the sky for the remaining Invid, spotting four of them immediately. Even as she looked, Steven took the opportunity to dispose of two more of them with a pair of long burst from the belly gun as they floated into the killzone. At this point the Invid tried to return fire. The two Enforcers tried to trap shoot the LEGIOS but the pilot was too skillful, and she was able to sweep and dive and then pivot in between the two sets of blistering concentrated energy fire, re-configuring back to jet mode for more speed and manuvuerability. As lindsey concentrated on evading the last two Enforcers, Steven set himself up to take the sweet shot on each of the Enforcers, dropping six missiles at each one just as they passed right into the optimum firing zone. Both Invid mecha pilots were so intent on shooting down the veritech that they failed to notice the incoming return fire until it was too late. One mecha was engulfed instantly by missiles detonation, and the other tried to futilily put it's energy shield up to block the incoming missiles. The shield was able to stop the initial impact of the six plasma missiles, but as the shield itself quickly overload, it could do nothing for the hapless pilot when the kinetic and liquid flame washed over it, sending it the way of it's wingmates.

Lindsey completed her Immelmann and had just leveled off when something seemed to swat at the plane from behind hard enough to rock her in her crash couch. The flight Lieutenant looked up and behind just in time to see another Royal Red Enforcer setting them up for another pass as the last of his plasma bolts slammed into the connection section between the Alpha and beta components. It seemed to pause for a moment, and time slowed down as Lindsey watched the Invid's plasma cannon start to glow white as it re-aligned the weapon just enough to aim directly into the cockpit...and at her. Then, just before it could fire, a beam of bluish-white light suddenly blew out of it's chest, and after wobbling for a moment, if fell to the earth below, leaking smoke and green nutrients in it's wake. The woman let out a breath that she wasn't even aware that she was holding as she looked down below her to see a pair of Tomahawk destroids, one with it's PBC arm still smoking from the shot that it had taken. Along side them were a dozen armored cyclone riders, who were already surrounding the crash pod and getting the pilot out and to safety.

"Doesn't look like he did to much more than scratch the paint and blow a few avionics, hun," Steven's voice came thru the mike suddenly, jolting Lindsey back to the here and now.

"Good. That means that we can stick around and provide CAP."

"Yeah, for the moment. We are kinda running a bit low on ammo, and Baelanos wants us to switch up with the next flight. Said he had something else in mind that he wants to try as soon as these attacks taper off completely."

"Right. Why do I get the feeling that we are not really going to like what he has in store next?" Lindsey queried as she watched the rescue team began to pull back quickly to the command bunker, the Destroid twins walking backwards covering their retreat. "Looks like they are done, so let's head back to the ranch."

"No complaints there, dear."

"Didn't think you would have any."

With that, the red and white LEGIOS rolled and followed the ground units back into the perimeter and yet another hard earned break before the next wave struck.

----Fade to Black as Closing Theme Kicks in-----

SithKnight-Galen's parting words: And thus, another fun installment out of my head and onto your screens for your viewing enjoyment. Please let me know what you people think of what I am writing. Feedback, both positive and negative are always apprecieated. Sorry if this chapter seems a bit muddle, but most firefights and battles have a tendancy to get jumbled like this when it is being told and seen from multiple points of view. I hope that it can still be followed, however. And tune in next chapter when we see what happens when Team Darmouth make it back to home base.

Again, this goes out to everyone on the DYRL Fan-fiction list, but especially GP PR, LisaV, KnightTemplar, CiceroPhelps, and Carla Fox. I also want to dedicate this chapter to that mecha-junkie, YaoiYaoiYeah. I really hope that this is living up to everyone's expectations so far.


	10. Chapter 09: At What Cost Indeed

Robotech: Pyrrhic Wardance-

A Sentinals-MOSPEADA Serial

By SithKnight-Galen

Chapter Nine: At What Cost Indeed

SK-G: Now that we were able to see what the rank and file were up to back at the home base, let's get back with Angie, Ryan, Abe, and Johnny and see what they have been up to since we last looked in upon them..

A/N: Standard disclaimers, so if you wish to sue, you win the same thing that the Galactic Imperial Army got tried to stop the Rebellion led by Han Solo on the Moon of Endor. Besides, if I owned any part to the Macross/Robotech franchise, beleive me, there would already be a Robotechnology Research Group developing me some kick-ass gear.

A/N 2: Yeah, I know, it looks like I am on a roll here, slamming out three chapters between my two stories in less than a week. I hope that this is not hurting my story quality at this point. Either way, let the dark lord here know what you think so far, what you would like to see more of, less of, and how many more Invid need to get pounded into paste by the end of this mission!

On with the story! :

------Once more, let's roll those Intro Credits and Cue that Macross Inro Music-------

The path ahead seemed clear as Ryan and the trio of cyclone riders came out of the mouth of the cave from which they had rendevouzed with Angie Spencer. While Darmouth was glad that his people had not run into anymore Invid since that batch that he had disposed of when he had rescued the downed pilot, the lack of activity did have him oddly on edge. This **WAS **the Invid Homeworld after all. Shouldn't the place be crawling with the walking, talking Expansionistically-minded slugs or their hellish creations? While he wasn't too much of a talker himself when on mission, he did find it a bit dis-concerting that everyone else was staying just as morosely silent as himself. Usually, most members of his unit were more vocal when they were on patrol, but now, it seemed that everyone had grown introspective during the last mile of trekking, even Zhao, which was really unusual.

_'Hmm, this is more than odd. What the hell happened that has everyone this on edge? Is everyone else also feeling that the Invid are being just a bit **too** quiet.I know that I am running around in this modified armor, and while the veritechs are all equipped with Lang and Burke's Cloaking devices, those aren't exactly area-effect, and we've discovered that even our hand-cannons and Gallants seem to attract them like honey to a bee. So where the hell are the welcoming commitees. The Zentraedi and our other forces can't be drawing **ALL** of their available forces,'_ Ryan thought as he watched the speck of light at the end of the tunnel complex expand to the familiar blasted landscape that was the Opteran surface. He tried to push his own mis-giving to the back of his mind so he wouldn't worry the rest of his party.

As they popped out of the cavern entrance and into the harsh evening glare, the quartet of armored infantry soldiers formed a cordon around the less well-equipped fighter pilot. Angelina glared daggers at Darmouth's back as he took the leftward flank, but it softened slightly as she glanced behind and saw the asian doctor smirking slightly at her with what could only be called a patiently paternal look. He nodded knowingly and then resumed his own vigil. Angie watched the tall soldier go a bit in front of the rest of the combat team and check the ground, while the dark complected man on her right side continues to watch an odd hand monitor that is attached via a cable to his powered armor. She decided to take her mind off of what the ground pounders were up to, as long as they were protecting her. She did, however, re-adjust the grip to the Gallant rifle that Ryan had given her back in the cave. While she knew that Darmouth's troopers were among the best in the fleet, it didn't hurt to be able to protect herself. She was able to keep up with the infantrymen, but after they get to the base of the hill and her leg began to bother her again, she had to wonder how much longer she would be able to keep up. Doctor Zhao had been able to re-set her ankle, but that didn't mean that her body was back in tip-top shape. She watched Darmouth once more as he continued to direct the troops over the hill after getting the all-clear from the pointman. While he was acting his normal self in front of his troops, she knew that something was bothering him even more than usual from how he kept avoiding her and was being even more quiet than normal. She also had to wonder why he hadn't told the combat surgeon that he had been injured while rescuing her. She knew that he could be stubborn, no, more like completely bull-headed about some things, but his life should not be one of them.

'_I am going to have to make sure that that idiot sees the doctor when we get back to the base. What does he think he is, Superman? Hell, even I don't really want him to die from him playing the martyr complex from rescuing me. While I want to see him dead myself, I am not going to give him the satisfaction of taking himself out that way.....stupid Ryan,' _Spencer mused as she followed the others up the next hill. She glanced once more over at Darmouth, but it appeared that once more, the man was ignoring her and was focusing his attention keeping his zone secure, although from where she was, all that could be seen was the LEGIOS off in the distance near where her own wrecked Alpha had crashed. She couldn't see any signs of any Invid, other than the scattered remains of the mecha that she had tangled with before. Gritting her teeth, Spencer tried to push any thoughts of Darmouth and his huberic maschimismo aside until she all but rammed herself into the rear of the suddenly stopped veritech power armor pilot. He seemed to be looking at things and the other two officers were scanning in every direction at the same time. The doctor, bringing up the rear, stopped almost at the same time, but was also confused by the sudden level of awareness that the others were exhibitng.

"What's going on?," Angie asked in a low voice to the Corporal in front of her, noticing that while he had stopped, it was more the Major and the other Military Specialist that were looking about to find whatever it was that had disturbed the pathfinder.

"Not really sure, just that it's too quiet, I guess, which would be the only thing that I can say right off."

"What do you mean, too quiet."

"Well," Corporal Martin Elias replied, his voice being kept low inspite of the seeming desolation of the place they were in. "There is always some kind of background noise. Even when we came in, I could pick up some distant noise generation. Now, however, nada. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it doesn't feel...._right_...I guess."

Angie nodded, not quite understanding what the man was babbling about, but it seemed that the others knew enough to take him at face value, and they were travelling through enemy territory, after all. At that point, Angelina noticed that the other Cyclone Rider, who answered to the name of Joseph, shook his head to the negative, but with some frustration at his machine and Darmouth motioned for the team to go ahead and move forward with a wave of one gauntleted hand. The others all complied without any hesitation, and Angie pushed herself to keep up as they crested the next hill. As they came down the otherside of the outcropping, Spencer noticed that the Beta was one of the Diamondback birds, but the Alpha was colored in the standard black and gray that all of the Shadow Alphas came decked out it, but it oddly had the green pinstriping of the Army Corps.

'_Hmm, did they fly in tandem, or was that Ryan's personnal ride? If that was his, how did he get it planetside, and when did he get himself trained enough in one of those for Derringer to have agreed to let him take it?'_

-------------

Ensign Johnny Whetstone had completed the LEGIOS combiner process not long after the others had gone down into the cave system, and then had killed the time up until now running diagnostics on both components of the massive war machine. He was back in the Beta section and trying to fight off the malaise of boredom from overcoming him when he spotted the team coming over the rise in the distance and begin to make their way down towards him and the ships. Snapping back to attention as the people that he was carrying came into scanner range, along with two more people, one of which appeared to be his wingmate, Johnny decided that now was as good a time as any to get everything activated from stand-by.

'_Ahh, it all checks out fine after all. And they said that it would be a hard thing to get these boys connected by myself. Heh,'_ Whetstone thought as all systems checked back to him in the green. He then kicked over the ignitors to the Beta's thrusters, in case the rescue team needed to make a more hasty egress. Johnny then glanced over to check on the progress of the Cyclone Riders on his external cameras. Everything appeared to be fine and he smiled. That smile then quickly disappeared as the proximity alarms started blaring inside the cockpit and multiple contacts suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Before he could even get on the mike to warn the others outside, the enemy wa salreayd on them. Johnny then cursed their collective luck as he watched the timer for the engines count down, saying that he still had at least ten more seconds before the ship was ready for lift off.

"Oh comon, you piece of crap!"

-----------------

Abraham was looking over his shoulder for the tenth time in about a minute when all of a sudden things began to take a turn for the worse. They we only about a hundred and fifty or so meteres away from the dropzone when Corporal Joseph paused momentarily, and his face scrunched up into one of that of bemusement as he suddenly started tapping frantically on the hand-held scanner that he had been watching like a television since they had been dumped off. Then he looked up, his pupils dilating.

"Shit, we are so screwed. Everybody, make a break for it! I got contacts all over the place!," Eric shouted to everyone and no one in general as he himself took off for the LEGIOS, un-holstering his own Gallant H-90 energy rifle as he did so. Just as he had gotten his gun free from it's shoulder sling and had replaced the montior back into it's hip holster, the ground around the ground team seemed to explode in geysers of earthern debries and suddenly rampaging Invid Enforcers and Shock Troopers. Eric side-stepped the first Shock Trooper as it lunged at him, and then drilled a series of pulse shots into the Enforcer behind it just as the Enforcer was lining him up for a shot. Joseph kicked in his boosters and tired to slip past their rest of their assailants. This proved to be something of a mixed blessing, as he was able to get out of close-combat range with any of the enemy, but he then drew more than a little un-wanted attention to himself as four of the shock Troopers and a pair of the Enforcers set up a cross-fire which quickly forced him back to the ground seeking any cover that he could find.

Corporal Elias had pulled his own gun free and was trying to back up Joseph when suddenly there was a shadow looming over him. The Cyclone jockey looked up just in time to see the bulbous pincer claw of the Shock Trooper slam into him from above and to the side, lifting him effortlessly up into the air. The young man screamed out as he felt his armor buckling and collapsing into his chest, snapping bone and muscle tissue, and forcing him to cough up blood against his visor. He tried to blink thru the immense amount of pain coursing thru his body and noticed that the Invid was no longer even paying him any attention, now that he had been thrown clear of the fight. Elias tried to move, but even breathing seemed to hurt too much.

Angelina also screamed when Elias was thrown aside. However, she wasn't really given the option of moving to help the unfortunate man, as the Invid had turned it's full attention her way the moment she activated her own weapon's power system. It had fired it's shoulder mounted plasma cannons behind her, throwing Zhao off of his feet, and then swung down at her with it's powerful pincer claws, with every intent of everscerating her. Angie stepped back and squeezed her eyes shut out of reflex, and put the gun up in front of her in the vain attempt to fend off the inevitable for at least a few more seconds.

The sound of something heavy and metal hitting the ground next to her caused angie to open her eyes. Darmouth was standing in front of her, his CADS powerblades out and humming with deadly hunger as he stared down the now one armed Shock Trooper. He didn't even glance back as he dropped into a modified Martial Arts stance, bringing the blades up from his sides to his front, and then effortlessly slapping aside the pulsed energy shots that the Invid threw at him. Ryan then smiled darkly, and lunged forward silently, and rammed his right blade straight into and through the now exposed sensor eye, skewering it and the pilot behind it. Noxious green lfuid burst out from the felling blow, but Darmouth had alreayd stepped aside before any of it could splash out and onto him. He then turned back to Spencer as she was re-covering her senses.

"Don't stop. Make a run for it. Get my Alpha up and get everyone out of here! I'll hold them off for as long as I can!"

Ryan was off before Angie could reply, and had moved to engage the group trying to whittle down Joseph's impromptu defenses and nail Joseph in the process. She made a move to follow after Ryan, but she found an armored fist on her shoulder suddenly arresting her in place. She looked back to see Zhao breifly shaking his head before pointing rather grimly to the LEGIOS. He then let her go to unload a long burst from his own rifle as he made his way over to the downed Martin Elias.

'_Dammit, dammit, dammit!,'_ the woman thought as she followed the doctor's instructions and made a break for the ship while the others put up a sufficient distraction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Darmouth successfully hamstring one of the Shock Troopers, then whirl around to eliminate one of Enforcers from behind with a CADS blade through it's back. Joseph had popped up from his hiding place and had peppered her path with anti-personnel mini-missiles before ducking back down under a still withering return barrage from the surviving Invid. It was blinding, but the missile barrage had it's intended effect, with both of the Enforcers that were in her way now convulsing on the rubble strewn ground, leaking nutrients from numerous cracks in their grey and black armor. Not wasting any time with pausing, Angie merely looked back once to fire a couple of burst to cover her own egress. As she turned around once more, she felt a sharp pain from her leg, causing her to collapse mere meters in front of the Alpha's cockpit. Steeling herself, she stuggled to her feet just as she was jostled by the concussive impact of something most definitely heavy landing just behind her. Not bothering to identify exactly what it was since the shadow was most definitely larger than that of a Cyclone, Angie whirled and opened fire with Ryan's rifle.

"Take that, you alien bastard! **DIE!**," she screamed at the top of her lungs as she pumped the entire clip into the Shock Trooper's body, punching massive holes into it's carapase with each deadly shot. She began to hyperventilate as the gun ceased to pour out energy, and the enemy mecha fell down , the top of it's head landing mere inches from her.

"Nice shooting there, cowgirl," Johnny's voice suddenly came thru her head mike, jarring her back to the present. "Now if you are done having fun, I need a co-pilot up front so I can get us the hell out of this party."

"Y-y-yeah...of course," Angie replied, finding her voice after a few moments. "I think we've worn out our welcome anyways."

"Glad to hear it. Everything is waiting for your tender touch, so let's get a move on so we can extract these ground-pounders before they get too much further over their heads out there, eh?"

Angie didn't bother answering as she climbed the retractable nose cone ladder and then gingerly climbing into the cockpit of the Army issue Alpha, sliding the canopy down behind her. She turned her head to see what was going on with the infantry team that had come to her rescue and narrowed her eyes. Zhao looked to be trying to man-carry the still downed and looked like badly injured Elias, armor and all, while Joseph and Darmouth were having the fight of their lives trying to protect the combat surgeon and his charge. There were almost two dozen Invid wrecks littering the field around them, but it did not seem that the aliens were planning to let up. Spencer could not watch what was going on outside for very long, however, as the Alpha confirmed that all systems were in the green very quickly and she turned her attention back to flying the plane.

------------

Abraham had made it about half-way to the LEGIOS when he suddenly realized that the Invid were beginning to focus more of their attention onto him than they were his more combat oreinted teammates. Maybe it was because he wasn't fighting back that hard, or maybe it was because he made a bigger signature between him and the now all but unconscious Elias on his back. Either way, Zhao knew that unless something changed really soon, he nor his wounded charge were going to be making back in one piece. Another barrage of plasma fire came down in his path, and the doctor was only barely able to twist enough out of the way for it not to do too much damage to himself other than to get knocked off of his feet yet again. Unfortunately, he had lost his grip on the corporal, and he was now half a dozen feet meters away from him and face-down. Turning about, the man unloaded half of his payload of chest mounted missiles at the oncoming aliens, then continued to crawl over to the fallen cyclone rider, not even bothering to check if the missiles had merely annoyed the two alien heavy hitters, or if they had struck true and blew the two armored slugs straight out of the air. He had just reached Martin and flipped him over to check his status when he felt a new wash of heat all but envelop him. Looking up and resisting the urge to shield his eyes out of reflex thanks to his visor, Abraham was pleasantly surprised to see the cargo bay doors to the Beta open up just above him.

"Need a lift, Doc?," Whetstone's voice cut into his helmet.

"By all means. Your timing could not have been better."

With that, Zhao tightened his grip on Elias' armor and then jet-boosted both of them up and into the waiting aircraft.

------------

Ryan knew that they were definitely fighting on borrowed time at this point, with the Invid seeming to be able to throw un-ending amounts of troops at him and his teammates. For everyone that he cut down, or one of the others blasted out of the air, there seemed to be another one of these thrice-damned aliens there to replace it. He tried to push the thought that this was all hopeless out of his mind, as he let loose another quartet of Armor Piercing missiles up to knock down a pair of incoming Armored Scouts while he dove under the legs of another Shock Trooper, pushing his CADS into it's less armored underside to punch thru it's crew compartment from below. Darmouth rolled out from under the Invid battlemecha it collapsed in on itself and gushed out a pool of green fluid in the spot that the military specialist had just vacated. Before the Shock Trooper could even hit the ground, Darmouth was off again, slamming himself bodily into another Enforcer unit, wrapping his deadly arm mounted energy blades around the Invid's power shield, cutting off it's head and shield arm in the same motion. Flipping up and over the beheaded Enforcer unit, Darmouth landed close enough to the struggling Joseph to give him enough of a respite to get his bearings.

Eric knew that this was not his cup of tea. He had seen the LEGIOS pick up the doc and Elias just before the Major landed next to him after wiping out the last of the bloody bugs keeping him pinned down. The black man was sweating profusely from a combination of exertion as well as heat build-up that his power armor was no longer able to keep up with. While the Invid had not been able to land any killing shots yet, there was definitely some battle damage that was hampering the suit's abilities to continue performing at operational levels. Darmouth unloaded another quartet of missiles that flew narrowly over Eric's head, causing him to flinch reflexively, then he felt something pick up from his kneeling position.

"Are you well enough to move, Trooper?" the Major bellowed over his mike.

Eric nodded dumbly, his training taking over where logic had shut down.

"Good, then get a move on to the dropship. I'll cover you."

With that, the Major moved off to hold off the remaining Invid power armors that were attempting to shoot down or at least do some grievous damage to their ride. Joseph decided to make good on his commander's orders and sprinted to the waiting LEGIOS as it flew over, then leaped up to the hole in the Beta's under section, his back thrusters too damaged to trust with carrying him anymore. He looked back and down just in time to see Darmouth trying to hold off all four of the still standing Enforcers with just the CADS and his natural abilities. In the time that it took for Joseph to get settled into the re-configured bomb bay, the major had been able to drop the number of Invid still standing from four to two, taking one out with a well placed stab thru it's chest, and another decapitation slash with a vicious haymaker shot to another's head. Eric and Abe were both rocked as the LEGIOS accelerated to where their last teammate on the ground was still fighting a desperate holding action, although he was most definitely making the enemy pay for engaging him, if the growing number of downed armors and smoking mecha were any indication to his damage potential.

Darmouth paused in his personal Search and Destroy mission and glanced up just as the LEGIOS flew overhead, slowing down to pick him up before leaving the area. While Ryan was more than a superior fighter and was considered one of the best hand-to-hand combatants amongst the members of the REF, even he was bound to make a mistake, and he realized that he had just made a critical one as the heat exploded against his already damaged side, spinning him around and down.

"**Arrggghh!!!**," Ryan bellowed as he rolled away from the Enforcer's follow-up shots. He was feeling the pain from the plasma blast and shrapnel from the fractured armor eating away at his side and right arm, but he was infuriated enough from being hit that his adrenaline would not let him stop and deal with the shock. Rolling back into a crouching position, he looked at the leader mecha that had snuck up on him and tagged him so effectively with an almost animalistic gleam in his eyes.

"You are going to pay so dearly for that, alien trash……Have at you!!," he screamed as he charged at the enemy command power armor once more, both CADS hungrily humming for vengeance.

The Invid brought up it's power shield to initially fend off the nearly beserking human, but quickly found that the shield's power supply was being overloaded from the hard hitting shots from the smaller mecha. It tried to shoot the human off of it, but only succeeded in blowing off one of the steering fans and the wheel hub assembly, and then the weapon arm was effectively silenced as Ryan brought his left CADS down solidly on it, amputating the arm at the shoulder. The Invid fell back after emitting an ear-splitting shriek, but Darmouth would not let up. He followed the Enforcer down swinging his bladed arms and kicking as quickly as he could, taking advantage of every opening that the wounded enemy unit was giving him. He first kicked away the power shield, then rammed the blades repeatedly into the power armor's sides, forcing it to spew out nutrients and hydraulics in a grotesque mirror of Darmouth's own injuries. As the Enforcer landed back on solid ground, Darmouth punched it's right knee once with the left CADS, then power kicked it twice, severing the limb and forcing the Invid down on it's remaining good leg.

"And now you know the price for trying to take what is mine….and for trying to go against me. Now go to hell, you bastard!"

The Invid looked up with it's damaged sensor eye just as Darmouth brought down his blade, cutting off it's head with one severing chop to it's neck. Ryan then began to slash at the body repeatedly, giving in to his anger briefly and ignoring everything else around him. This continued for a few seconds until Angelina's voice broke through the red haze that had briefly consumed the combat officer.

"Ryan, it's over, we need to go now or we are not going to be going at all, " she said softly, but determinedly over the mike, her voice carrying a quiet urgency and concern that he had not heard in quite some time. Shaking off the crimson rage, Ryan nodded and then jumped up into the waiting cargo bay. Before he could topple over, he was grabbed by Joseph and Zhao. Looking over to the doctor, he knew he had to ask.

"Abe, is everyone okay?"

"Well, Martin is going to need emergency treatment, and I am sure that everyone else could use a few days leave, but yeah."

"Good, good job guys," Ryan then said, moving away from the others, feeling fatigue beginning to overtake him. "I think…..I think I am going to take a seat right over..here…for a ..a few minutes….you know…sit down…"

Ryan then smiled at the Doctor and the Communications Specialist, then collapsed in heap while looking at his now bloodied hand that he pulled away from his side. Both of them were next to him in a minute, trying to pop him out of his damaged armor and acertain just how badly he was injured. Suddenly, Eric jumped back, almost as if he was recoiling from something. Abraham paused and looked over at the young man, his face open curiousity.

"What the hell? Why is he bleeding green?," the rattled Corporal queried, not quite sure what to do.

-------Fade to Black as Closing Theme Kicks in--------

SithKnight-Galen's parting words: And thus, another fun installment out of my head and onto your screens for your viewing enjoyment. Please let me know what you people think of what I am writing. Feedback, both positive and negative are always appreciated. Sorry if this chapter seems a bit muddle, but most firefights and battles have a tendency to get jumbled like this when it is being told and seen from multiple points of view. I hope that it can still be followed, however. And tune in next chapter when we see what happens when Team Darmouth make it back to home base.

Again, this goes out to everyone on the DYRL Fan-fiction list, but especially GP PR, LisaV, KnightTemplar, CiceroPhelps, AdmiralHayes2004, Spherisian, and Carla Fox. I also want to dedicate this chapter to the two true muses in my life, thank you girls for all of your support my dear Ama-chan and my sweet Caitie-bird.


End file.
